Reigate Ninja

Oh boy...this was absolutely years ago, I'm thinking I was in 3rd year of secondary school?  Something like that anyway.  The night itself is etched forever in my mind though...

This story involves me and a very old friend called "Rattyjunk".  Together we got interested in Martial Arts, especially the weapon kata (great fun).

Together we practised endlessly (nunchuku, tonfa, sai, shuriken and bokken most often), together we slowly improved and together we smashed (along the way) -

a) my bedroom cupboard door
b) a couple of Mean machine Angel's parent's irreplaceable antique living room light fittings
c) my elbow (far too many times)
d) Ratty's large double glazed window in his bedroom (utterly destroyed)
e) Ratty's neck when trying to be a bit flashy with the nunchuku

Oh and we melted his parent's kitchen worktop with some incense while we were at it too.

Pleased with our mutually agreed progress, together we decided we were ready to go out and test our ninja powers around Priory Park in Reigate one dark autumn evening.  We couldn't afford Tabi boots or anything, so we just got our blackest clothes and balaclavas and things and made the best of it.  We actually looked pretty good.

Anyway, after supper, we strapped our (fully functional) weapons to ourselves in various places that didn't make too much of a knocking or chinking sound when we ran, enjoyed a crisp high five, and headed out into the night...

Hah...the fun we had - both of us are well over 6 foot tall and not terribly light of foot (hardly hobbit material) so I guess we probably crashed rather than snuck through the woodland, but we didn't let that stop us stalking a few dog walkers and merry groups heading down into town for a pint or two.  Most people either chose to ignore us or hurried away a little quicker than they would have done otherwise (encouraging their suspicious pets to keep up).

We thought we had done terribly well, until, in full ninja crouch (complete with sword stock visible over shoulder) half way across the football pitch near Priory school the blue lights of a police car became apparent creeping right into the park itself and they weren't terribly far away - the twin beams of the headlights scanning slowly towards us (they were clearly looking for someone - no cars ever normally drive into the park)...

FUUUUUU....!

We RAN, staying as low as we could, just making the edge of the woods before the halogen beams cut through the darkness where we had just been crouched...

That evening on our breathless adventure back through the park there were lots of people with torches and radios, which we avoided, and a number more police cars patrolling the perimeter of the park -  we somehow managed to avoid all of them on our way home...so we couldn't have been that bad sneaking when it actually mattered...

It was only when I read the Surrey Mirror the next week that I realised that someone had fired a shotgun through the window of one of the pubs in Reigate town that evening, and it wasn't (in fact) us that the police were hunting for that night...

Suffice it to say we kept the ninja garb and weapons at home from then on...