The potato chipper, p.5
The Potato Chipper, page 5
2002 finished off with a friendly international event where I beat Germany’s representative and had a couple of Chinese rules kickboxing bouts on the mat prior to revisiting Denmark for the European Internal Kung Fu Championships. After a fantastic year with many victories, the Europeans didn’t quite work out as many had desired. However, for myself, I fought many outstanding opponents and with a bit more luck, I’d have picked up a Bronze medal for sure. I fought against one Irish fighter (who shortly afterwards was to win a Shuai Chiao Jacket Wrestling World Championship in Taiwan) towards the end of the day who had whipped everybody earlier with precision, power, flexibility and clever tactics. I was not to going to be completely outdone however and was the only person throughout the day to score a clean throw on him which although he scored two throws on me denoted that I lost 13-6 which in the context of the category, would be considered akin to a Rugby score or two to one in football. One can certainly obtain ‘victory’ in certain defeats, and I certainly felt that I’d made an impression on him.
However, the return journey out of Denmark to the port of Harwich was to be marred by a spot of bother. Much celebrating was done by the party of athletes who had accrued spoils but as is often the case when alcohol is involved, over exuberance and drunkenness among those who don’t normally drink, together with one or two irate Danes with Criminal Underworld connections caused a mini-riot to break-out on the vessel. Chairs were knocked over and the former singer of Steps, Faye Tozer who was engaged to a Danish fella’ that I and my small group of friends had personally got on very well with during the evening was accidentally struck in the process which understandably didn’t amuse her fiancé. This nearly led to an organised fight at Harwich docks between my team coach and the individual. It never happened in the end not due to a lack of desire on the part of both to settle the score, but because others got in and intervened.
2003 saw me up the training still further and I was introduced to Iron Palm and Poison Finger training. The former is an established society, set up in San Francisco in 1980 by Sifu Ark Wong and Sifu D Kash. There are essentially fifteen levels of which I completed the first two. Level one training in essence involved packing Soya Beans into a money bag and striking it with four points of the hand – These being the palm, the back of the hand, the chopping part of the hand on the side and the area just below the thumb. Each day, the student would land one hundred strikes, which would progressively condition the hands and wasn’t painful as such, but would cause a redness, a stinging sensation on the hand where the chi was building up to reinforce the strength of that area. The culmination of this level was to break tiles with all points of the hand.
The second level training followed a similar sequence, but this time, with a bucket of sand where the student drives the fingers in to the sand, forms a fist to grip the sand prior to twisting and releasing the contents. This gives incredible strength to the forearms, not to mention the fingers and culminated for me with a test of my fingers where a Master held a house tile up in front of me and I eventually, on the third attempt, broke the tile with my fingers. Not so easy this time and I’m not one who would wish to become obsessed with this training, although it does serve a purpose as those who solely punch fresh air, will possibly only have a punch that can deal with such an opponent.
Towards the end of 2004, and in early 2005, I started to fix my intentions on fighting at the British Open Chinese Full Contact Tournament at Oxford which comprised part of the Tai Chi Chuan and Internal Arts contest. These fights were three by two-minute rounds of fast and furious ‘rucking’ with a wildly differing standard.
Although I had fought under these rules elsewhere, the Open tournament was an unknown quantity and if you weren’t prepared, you could become seriously unstuck against a honed opponent. The fights resembled Muay Thai but with the added element of grappling with takedowns and throws.
A few years previously, a training colleague and friend had entered while I fought in a different grappling category. He fought a guy with strength, agility, flexibility, good hands and powerful measured kicks. My friend was to survive the fight unscathed as he managed to get in some good blocks which saved him from serious injury, although he did spend most of the fight going backwards. He was to only score one point in the fight, compared to his opponents who scored twenty plus, and he was unanimously beaten in two rounds. At the same contest, I was to also witness a Turkish gentleman by the name of Sami Berik take apart his opponent inside within two rounds. One notable point was that the gulf in class was so big that his brave opponent couldn’t wait for the fight to end. This was the issue with that contest; you never knew who you would come up against and the fights were ferocious although some were far more skilful than others.
However, in some ways, this was better than the usual spectacle that we see with pugilist contests where one opponent gets to cancel out the other because he has watched videos of this foe. Real fighting, and by default, self-defence is what we are attempting to replicate here and let’s face it, we don’t have the luxury of watching a video of the thug that is threatening us to see how he prefers to take a swing at individuals.
I was more than up for the challenge, so I set about getting myself in training for this. This started with some initial roadwork for the stamina, interspersed with specific technique work, mostly combinations of one to two strikes between the face and midriff, with a kick and in the case of an opening, a closure of the gap to enable a throw to be performed. With the strength requirements of such a fight, I did practise some weight work and for the speed, used a mixture of splashing hands together with twenty-five x forty metre flat out downhill sprints performed in blocks of five with an appropriate rest between the sets. The sprints were advised by a boxer who said that the downhill element would greatly assist with the ‘zip’ factor.
So, in early 2005, after a stint in Australia alternating free fall parachuting and bodyboarding, I undertook a concluded a twelve-week build-up for Full Contact Chinese rules fight in Oxford. That turned out to be a bit of a protracted stalemate against an opponent who was not particularly good technically, but who could hit hard, had stamina, was extremely strong and was durable. I switched strategies switching from chopping, midriff kicks, low kicks to his legs, to rapid jab punches prior to attempting throws and on strikes, we were about even but he had edged the second round with two force-outs to my one with his extra one being a close call that could have easily gone my way. In the final round, he caught me with two full on scything, swinging hook punches that while not knocking me down, rattled me to such an extent that the doctor was straight over to conduct an initial concussion check after the fight and an EEG brain scan several years later confirmed that I had suffered a concussion. Although the fight was close, I lost on points, just. However, I was to receive consolation when an international fighter that had been watching the bout congratulated me on my performance for some of the kicking skill that I showed and assured me that my future in the arts was rosy whereas my opponent had showed very little and would continue at the same level. ‘A few subtle changes in your approach would see you beat him in a re-match quite easily. Your kicking skills were good, nobody else has showed anything comparable to yours, well done.’ Nice, I felt vindicated in my approach somewhat, although I didn’t get too syrupy as I had lost, albeit only on a narrow points decision.
Key Learning Point: I’m not a hundred percent believer in the saying that you learn more in your defeats than your victories but sometimes, it can be a blessing. Taking one step back can lead to you going three steps forward in the future. The sign of mental toughness is how you react to the defeats and even prior to this particular fight, I had resolved that I was retiring from competitions to pursue a more enlightened, all in fighting ability that incorporated ancient fighting skills that had been used centuries before, inclusive of swords, spears and other weapons, rather than to continue using mitts in kickboxing contests.
5. Studies and Observations
When you read this, you will ask who I was working for? On occasions, I couldn’t even tell you because, some of the time I didn’t know, but what I will say is that the stakes were immense, and screw-ups were not an option
I had never visited the west country in England (for those of you outside of England, this means the extreme south-west of the country). I had heard such interesting things about its rolling moorland, strong riptides precipitating good surf and loyalty to all things English but with a Celtic character. In the summer of 2007, a chain of events permitted me to visit Cornwall for the first time. It was however not to be for a relaxing visit, but to work in tandem with a Scottish guy in effecting the protection of an individual that was under a death threat. I will not elaborate on the specifics as it was a fairly boring job in which I and ‘Doug’ merely had to sit for twelve hours through the night while the person making the threats was tracked via a variety of surveillance means, and we liaised with the tracking guys to confirm his location.
The job did not last for a long time as a decision was made for financial reasons to go technical and insert a tracking device onto the target’s car and maintain covert passive surveillance on him. A spanner was thrown into the works when I was told that he had been informed by a friendly secretary that such measures were being taken. He had been allegedly defrauding a business out of money, not exceptional but his violent past meant that he was not to be taken lightly.
Key Learning Point: Fraud is rife in the working world today with social scientists/psychologists believing that for every four people in the working world, one is essentially honest, one is fundamentally dishonest and therefore actively looking to ‘steal,’ with the remaining two having the potential to steal IF an opportunity presented itself to them. A sense of entitlement is often cited as a motivating factor by those wishing to steal (i.e., ‘This business is stealing from us, so I’ll/We’ll take back what is rightfully ours to level the playing field’ is one often heard comment.
Anyhow, my involvement with the task was done, the lady eventually moved house to an undisclosed location. We were officially stood down and one of my abiding memories of the job was trying to work out if the people walking by my car in the hours of darkness, down the road were ghosts, drunks from the pub or persons of interest. We could rule out the final one but I’m not so sure that they weren’t ghosts as I’m reliably informed that the Celtic land of Cornwall has more than its fair share of them.
This was my brief but potent introduction to the private surveillance, and if I must, security world, that has led me onto some of the most interesting, investigation tasks I have been assigned to and the majority of these came via an individual with a knowledge of surveillance, counter-surveillance, and infiltration of enterprises for due diligence checks/countering fraud, that I don’t really think could be bettered. For the purposes of this book, we will call him ‘Chris’ and during the phone calls that I would frequently receive from him, his voice tonality and projection was distinctive enough to be marked aside from the majority. Think of the role of Harry (Ralph Fiennes) from the movie ‘In Bruges’.
Chris was forming a new team, roughly comprising seven people, six men and one woman to develop a protective surveillance capability, although there would be other assignments as well. Protective surveillance is essentially the idea of a client being protected but by people operating at a distance, far enough away to be detached from the principal, but observing the surroundings and closing if there were any assessed threat in the vicinity. A lot of our practice for this was done on the Edgeware Road of London and in England’s home counties. Procedures for the underground, trains, pubs and restaurants were honed and eventually I was tasked to work with Chris on my first electronic surveillance operation.
He phoned me and asked me to meet him at a designated spot in the early hours, before, in a discreet manner, giving me the general location where the task was to take place. I did some research on the area prior to going down, roughly working out fast routes out for an extraction, the nearest hospital location as well as other areas of interest.
I met Chris at 23.30 hours, and we immediately proceeded onto the road for the two-hour drive to London for the insertion of a tracking device onto a car. I was not to know anything about the target as we were carrying out the op’ on behalf of a wider operation. All Chris told me was that the guy was apparently a wealthy Middle East businessman who was ‘up to no good’ by all accounts but he was vague about that. He didn’t appear to know either, although it was his business, not mine and I had no need, nor desire to know. I did however need a general idea as one never knows if the job will be potentially violent. Chris was to insert the tracking device with me doing the supporting role in a walk-through of the area and providing the coverage and back up if anything went wrong.
Chris had briefed me beforehand, just to give me the walking pattern and manner of proceeding up to the driveway of the house, which was essentially a paved front garden, immediately adjacent to the foot path set on a leafy avenue in a lower-middle class area. This is not merely a question of rolling up to the house. It requires minute attention to detail. We were essentially to initially drive past the area to confirm that the vehicle was in-situ and what the state of the overseeing properties was like (i.e., were there overseeing cameras that could pick up/record our presence), lighting and then park about half a mile away, split up, and then both walk towards the target.
Just to briefly step back in time, I couldn’t help but feel as we were driving down that the roles would switch as he would possibly make this a test of my mettle given that this was the first time we had operated together. He would clearly want to see what I could and couldn’t do, or should I say, what I would be prepared to do and wouldn’t be prepared to do. Unsurprisingly, within twenty-minutes of reaching the target area, he turned to me and said those lovely words.
“I tell you what, do you want to lead it?”
I smiled and said, “Yep, I’ll do it”, as a slight jolt of adrenaline was injected into my bloodstream to assist in the burnout recovery that I was still working on from my ‘Ambulance era’. I was to effectively go in first on the op’ as the Number one and I had to get it right.
On reaching the avenue of interest, we would then separately turn in to the street with me walking up the pavement/sidewalk on the same side of the target house driveway and with Chris walking on the pavement on the other side of the road, set slightly back about ten to fifteen metres. To give you an understanding of the orders we had agreed to follow, the final approach to the target involved a walk of approximately a hundred metres. At fifty metres from the target point, Chris would cross the road and drop in about ten metres behind me, looking just like another pedestrian I must add. As I reached the position where the car was parked on the driveway, adjacent and exposed to the footpath, I would then drop onto my left knee to tie up my shoelaces. He would then continue walking past me while completing a final check of the area on the move to see if anybody was observing and then whisper ‘yes, all clear, or no, abort & move on.’ It was probably as much due to my sense of humour that he had to say “your call, people around but not observing directly” as he walked straight past me. The tension was palpable, and I wanted to get the job done and get out, so I dived under the car and spent about one minute underneath it, finding a location on the vehicle to attach the device but also finding a location where a signal would be received. This I duly did, and we withdrew, having had what was to be seen as a partial success.
To elaborate, his reasoning behind putting the ball in my court stemmed principally because a man and a woman were standing at the window of the house opposite, on the upper level, with the light on, although they were facing each other; having what appeared to be a heated disagreement. I decided to drop under the car and fix the device; thinking that if I were bubbled, my excuse would have been that I’d dropped my mobile phone and it had fallen under the car – not great but better than nothing. The fear of being kicked while under the car was my main concern, but we had no such issues in the end. I must be honest and say that I made the call to get under the car and do it because the tension was unbelievably high, and I didn’t want to need a second go around.
I would maintain that we had a partial success because the target used the car for one to two days which gained some information for those who needed it, but then he switched to using a different car, so we had to remove the device a few days later and repeat the op’ on the new car about a week later.
There also lies the issue of compromise of the device. We had to ask ourselves; ‘Why has he changed the vehicle? Has he detected a device and set up counter-surveillance to identify who is following him?’ – quite possible, although it may just be his own security measures to break up any pattern he set. It was generally odd behaviour for a conventional businessman, however.
We repeated the drill two weeks later the newer vehicle, this time with me as the support, although we used a different walking pattern on that one and we parked our vehicle further away to the north side of the target. Chris hadn’t emerged after five minutes and I was moving towards the area of interest when a message came through that we were to do a switch/hand-off in the street, south of the target and that I would then subsequently need to attach the device as he’d been unable to fix it. I wondered if he were winding me up for fun and that this was just another test; but in fairness, which wasn’t his kind of humour.
