A Walk Around Britain

In Marazion, beside St Michael’s Mount, after 6 months walking in 2007 we are here, in friendly amateur combat.

The rules are simple: Tap the leg of your opponent, beneath the knee, keeping two hands on your staff, and stopping your opponent from tapping your leg.

You need space, a disposition not lent to tidal aggressiveness, and a good pair of stout staffs.

The singing is from a recording made in a family’s music room in Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, some 2 months earlier.

We discovered ankle-tap only a few weeks before, in a little town called Lostwithiel. It was probably devised as a ‘format’, and not a spontaneous childrens’ game, in the years following the Norman invasion of Britain, when Saxons were denied from carrying weapons. This is the historic context that gave rise to Capoiera, and Escrima, in Brazil and the Phillipines.

Ankle-tap. It’s a good sport, and rarely causes more than a bruise on the shin.

BUT: legally, with all social reponsibility in mind, no-one should ever do anything they learnt from the internet, and no-one should do anything without their parents, an MP, doctor, and minister of religion, being present in a democratic and CCTV’d manner.

Don’t do anything at home; especially not the ancient fun game of Ankle Tap.