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A while ago at a Frankfort school, as part of Global Village Day, people with connections in foreign cultures were invited to come and talk about differences. Despite being nervous with children en masse, I was to go talk with them about being British. I looked for visual aids: an old British navy sword and telescope, my bowler hat and, hey! A cricket bat. In emergency I reckoned these might serve for self-defense, for keeping distance, for head security, and for distraction, respectively. Perhaps I could survive!

I already knew that one needed personal clearance – delinquency records, etc. - before mingling with innocents. The Kings Center in South Frankfort had taught me about that, where Misty Seitz runs a fine after-school program. You can’t be too careful with crazies around. Anyway, the sword and I got safely into Good Shepherd’s classroom, to find the children perhaps even more nervous than I – but, hey, they were on home turf. However when I drew the fearsome weapon from its scabbard and waved it enthusiastically, they all seemed suddenly good as gold.

Swords have featured in my life twice. I inherited the above-mentioned from a naval hero uncle who, in 1915, ended his days violently in a submarine off the coast of Turkey. Those were gunpowder days, of course, and swords were for peace-time ceremonies. At our 1961 wedding we recessed through a splendid arch of naval swords held by old buddies in uniform. That’s the best use of a sword I know, until that day at the end of time when they’ll all be beaten into plough-shares.

Through high school I took up foil fencing – the foil being a blunted form of the rapier – and took the equipment to sea with me as a midshipman in case there was time to play. Teaching sailors the lunge, the parry and riposte on a rolling deck during dog-watches in the Indian Ocean was for ever memorable. With troop convoys coming through to North Africa from Australia and New Zealand, while the Japs kept east of the Bay of Bengal and the Huns stayed west of Suez, there was often nothing in the world to stop us taking-on Captain Hook and the Three Musketeers and staying fit - better by far than sitting-around playing Tom Bola, also known as Bingo.