During the days of flower power and the psychedelics joined by hippies, there was a cafe in Soho where all the flower power and so on gathered.
A few miles away Judoka trained all through the night in a cold dojo during winter and took cold showers afterwards, if you did well and stuck it out for seven weeks, I think they called kangusaki, you got a certificate which helped towards your next grading and belt.
In the basement where we trained in London(not the one at the friends house) the steam from our sweating bodies came though the grills that ventilated the dojo.
Afterwards we showered in freezing cold water, we donned tracksuits and jogged to the cafe.
There were the psychedelic's, flower persons, hippies and so on, drop outs, drop ins and us Zen and Judo nuts.
Many of the Psychedelics were rather thin and pale we were muscular and rather intimidating, we never threatened or mocked them and we would talk Buddhist tenets and find common ground, several of our Judo mob dated the rather amorous hippie ladies, I had a lovely friend, we were not intimate, and she called herself ' ' Goodie two Shoes' ( Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. The fable tells of Goody
Two-Shoes, the nickname of a poor orphan girl named Margery Meanwell,
who goes through life with only one shoe. When a rich gentleman gives
her a complete pair, she is so happy that she tells everyone she has
"two shoes". Later, Margery becomes a teacher and marries a rich widower.
This earning of wealth serves as proof that her virtuousness has been
rewarded, a popular theme in children's literature of the era.[(courtesy Wikipedia)
She had a University degree in psychology and we had lots of chats over steaming soup which we needed after the workouts, she later went to India and became a Buddhist Nun.
The wonderful contrasts between the two sets of peoples and their cultures, we were all very fond of one another and we looked to meet them after training and they welcomed us, lovely gentle folk.
SHACK
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