Guy Windsor
I’m here today with Dr. Marli Vlok who is a virologist, historical martial arts instructor and historical flag waver, we’ll get into exactly what that means in the interview. And she was also an ex-competitive target shooter who represented South Africa for a decade. So without further ado, Marli, welcome to the show.
Marli Vlok
Hi, thank you. Thanks for having me. And good job on the name.
Guy Windsor
Oh, thank you. I worked all day on that one. All right. So whereabouts in the world are you?
Marli Vlok
I am currently in Ottawa, Canada. I guess not a lot of people know about Ottawa, even though it’s our capital. It’s not a super big city. It is one of the coldest capitals in the world. Yeah, we’re just northeast of Toronto. sufficiently close to the States. Lovely city. If you haven’t been here, great city to visit. Beautiful.
Guy Windsor
I’ve been to Toronto more than once. I’ve been to Vancouver more than once. I’ve never made it to Ottawa.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, no, you should. It’s beautiful, it’s bilingual so you can practice your French which I don’t speak.
Guy Windsor
C’est ne pas un bonne idee. That means, that is not a good idea. My spoken French has always been crap. I can read sort of an 18th century fencing text in French I can just about handle, but on any other subject, no. And conversationally, not really.
Marli Vlok
There’s a bunch of French fencers here so you know.
Guy Windsor
I should come and they could laugh at my French.
Marli Vlok
They’re pretty polite over here. They probably wouldn’t laugh at you.
Guy Windsor
And actually, French people in Paris have always been, anytime I’ve tried to speak French in Paris. I just get just sneered at. But outside of Paris, every French speaker I’ve ever spoken to in French has been really impressed that I tried, even if the result wasn’t very good. It’s like when a five year old comes up to you with a drawing that they’ve done. And you’re pretty sure it’s an airplane but you’re not quite sure.
Marli Vlok
You’re like, well done, dear.
Guy Windsor
Yes, that’s amazing, that’s great. That’s basically how nice French speaking people respond to my spoken French.
Marli Vlok
I can’t tell you whether people here would respond well to it. Because I don’t speak French. But I think overall, people are pretty accommodating.
Guy Windsor
Are you in Ottawa for your virology job?
Marli Vlok
Yeah. We actually moved here because my partner got a job with Stats Canada, and they’re in Ottawa. And so I looked for a job here.
Guy Windsor
What is Stats Canada?
Marli Vlok
Oh, it’s the governmental statistics department. So he works there. And I work in biotech.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Okay. And you’re a virologist, correct?
Marli Vlok
Yes, I have an inordinate fondness for viruses. And I don’t think you’re podcast is long enough to cover that?
Guy Windsor
Well, no, I think it actually is, because it’s as long as I want it to be. We’ve had one virologist on here before, who completely blew my mind with stuff I didn’t know about how without viruses, we wouldn’t have developed intelligence because they’re sort of little packages of chemical data that gets shuffled around in your brain is actually wrapped in something that was originally a virus or something. I’m probably getting it wrong. But oh, my God, I never knew that. So if you want to just spend the rest of the time talking about virology, that’d be great. But I was just thinking, you have a statistician in the house and a virologist in the house. Just how badly did you want to smash your head against the wall with everything that everyone said about the pandemic? Yeah, I’m sorry.
Marli Vlok
I don’t wanna. No, no, no, no, I’m just kidding it. It was tough. I think we had a lot of rant sessions. Yeah, I think at some point, though, we came to a healthy compromise where we were just like, we cannot change humanity. But it was hard. It was hard to disconnect. Because I would get these questions. I still get questions where people are like, do you really think we should take the vaccine? I know five people who took it and died. And I’m like, well, I took all four shots and I feel okay, actually, I just had a medical today and I’m like fit as a fiddle.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I think a lot of what’s going on there is if people get ill and die, well, that’s kind of natural processes and that’s not so bad. Every now and then a vaccine will cause a bad reaction. So you have maybe a one in 1000 chance of dying of the disease or a one in a million chance of dying of the vaccine or less than that. But if you die the disease, well, that’s kind of not your fault, because diseases are really tricky. But if you go and get a vaccine that’s something you did, something somebody did to you. So that is a million times worse in people’s conception of these things.
Marli Vlok
But then we don’t think about that when we drink or when we smoke. They’ve just lowered what they call the safe alcohol consumption in Canada. It’s much lower than what it used to be.
Guy Windsor
And honestly, I’ve been north of the safe alcohol consumption of pretty much any country since I was about 10.
Marli Vlok
Well, I think most people who weren’t before the pandemic definitely are now.
Guy Windsor
That’s very true. Like, you know, people ask about swords being dangerous. Yeah, but do you drive a car? Oh, but that’s different. How’s it different? You know, I’ve been doing flying small aircraft, and at the level that I’m doing it at, which is taking off an airfield, flying around a little bit, maybe doing a few extra landings for fun, and then flying off to some nearby town and circling around it and coming back to practice navigation and maybe landing somewhere else and coming back again. But basically never been more than about an hour and a half’s drive from my original airfield, and never more than about 10 minutes flying time from somewhere you can safely land. It’s actually, in this phase of the training, it is more dangerous to drive to the airfield than it is to fly the plane.
Marli Vlok
Does that mean you’re gonna fly over to Ottawa and come visit us?
Guy Windsor
You know, the thing is, no, because the bit of flying that I really like, is not going in a straight line for a long time. It’s the turning around in circles, and I would love to be an aerobatics pilot. That’s where I would like to get to.
Marli Vlok
I had a friend that did that. He loved it. Absolutely loved it. Took me a little kid. I was terrified.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Yes. The screams from the back are great. Yeah, my instructor was an aerobatic pilot. And so we’ve done some things in the training Cessna that they’re definitely safe. You wouldn’t do anything unsafe, but they didn’t feel safe. They felt like oh, dear God, I have seconds to live.
Marli Vlok
Well, apparently, you have multiple repeats of those seconds to live. So let’s go.
Guy Windsor
Exactly, yeah. Okay, so what kind of virology do you actually do?
Marli Vlok
Oh, I am one of those odd specimens that I would call a generalist in the world of virology? I think most virologists, you know, focus on the medical side. And that’s sort of where the funding is.
Guy Windsor
Is there any other side?
Marli Vlok
Yes. Oh, my goodness. So I mean, there’s the agriculture side, and that’s sort of where I started off. Like using insect viruses as bio control agents.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so that, again, insect viruses as bio control agents, how does that work?
Marli Vlok
So essentially, they use viruses that are specific to select insects, which are normally pathogens of crops, and they use them as an alternative to pesticides.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Is that effective?
Marli Vlok
It’s pretty effective. So we have a baculovirus product that’s been out for years. It works pretty well. I don’t know how cost effective it is. And baculoviruses tend to not be that specific. So what I originally worked on was a virus that was specific to cotton ball worms. And it worked great. But it never surpassed the gold standard of what industry had and that’s the hard part in agriculture. You have to show the new technology is better and surpasses it substantially so that’s when I left that behind, it’s too much politics. And then I got into, this was my PhD work, a field which is not very well known, but actually gaining a lot of traction since COVID. Environmental virology, so I sequence the ocean, essentially, like we would go out on a boat and collect litres of water and filter out all, and when I say big things, I mean like bacteria and then concentrate virus particles and analyze them and see what’s in there.
Guy Windsor
So there are viruses living in the ocean?
Marli Vlok
Oh so much, it’s like a soup of viruses. Doesn’t that just make you want to go back to the beach?
Guy Windsor
Honestly, it doesn’t bother me. I did some biology at university as a minor subject. I’m maybe a little bit more familiar with just how much we are covered in bacteria and viruses all the time. I’ve cultured bacteria in petri dishes and done gram stains and whatnot. So the notion of going into the sea, and actually, it’s full of shit living in it, that’s sort of to be expected. It’s the biggest petri dish on the planet.
Marli Vlok
So much.
Guy Windsor
So well, what are these viruses doing now? Are they preying on plankton or what?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, exactly. It’s almost like you’re in the field. The majority of them either infect bacteria or single celled eukaryotes. And so they’re involved in a lot of nutrient cycling as they lyse the hosts the nutrients get released. And that’s kind of what they do. They don’t infect people. There was one story, which was a little disconcerting. They found these giant viruses that infect amoeba, and they’re huge. They’re bigger than the smallest bacterium. And someone decided was a good idea to do an animal experiment with it. And they injected it into brains of mice. Which I get squeamish, I’m not an animal experiment person. But it actually caused an infection, which had me a little worried for a while because I’ve been filtering that stuff for years.
Guy Windsor
How does something that’s adapted to look at an amoeba and go “dinner”, and jump in there and start taking over its DNA and reproducing yourself or whatever. It shouldn’t like the environment of being inside a mammal, because it’s totally different.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t necessarily the world’s most robust study. But if you were sufficiently close enough to those sorts of samples, you go, oh, no. It’s okay. I’ve made it. I’m confident I’m okay.
Guy Windsor
You don’t have you don’t have amoeba virus in your brain?
Marli Vlok
I hope not. I know a lot of people might argue about that.
Guy Windsor
You seem to be thriving on it. Okay, so you’re studying these viruses. Is it for curiosity? Or is it for some applicable purpose?
Marli Vlok
So again, I think there are some groups who have looked into trying to use them as bio control agents for these harmful algal blooms. I looked at it more from a diversity and evolution perspective. And so there are some really nice big data studies where they try to find the viral ancestor, which is no easy feat. And they look like some of the viruses we see in the ocean. And so a lot of my work was more discovery based, just what is out there. And then trying to put it into some taxonomic framework and providing that missing context. Because I think just before I did my started my PhD, there was a viral evolution book that got published, and there was a quote in there that really stood out for me and I’m totally going to misquote this. But essentially, where they said that we don’t really have a hope of advancing virology until we actually understand what the hell is out there.
Guy Windsor
Right. Yeah, fair enough.
Marli Vlok
And so that was sort of a driving force behind being sneaky.
Guy Windsor
So okay, here’s a question that just popped into my head. It’s bit of a chicken and egg question. So a virus doesn’t have any of the necessary components for reproducing itself, it has to basically take over the reproductive capabilities of some other cell, like a bacterium.
Marli Vlok
For the most part. It’s a reasonably accurate statement.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So it’s like a bit of genetic material in a protein coat. So what came first, the genetic material in a protein coat, or the thing that it can inject itself into to reproduce itself?
Marli Vlok
You know, that was a question on my comprehensive exam.
Guy Windsor
Because the virus is a simpler form, it has less parts. So one would assume simplicity is earlier, but how can it to reproduce itself if it doesn’t have any mechanisms to do that?
Marli Vlok
So I think if we just look at literature, they talk a lot about this is what we think the early viral genomes look like. And I think for the most part, we’re talking about an RNA genome. We do have examples of RNA viruses that don’t actually have capsules. So there are there are fungal viruses, which they’re tiny, I think they’re like 2.5 kilobases. And essentially, they code for a single protein, which is their replication protein, which then sits on the genetic material that codes for it. And it kind of looks like a ribosome. Almost. And so I have always imagined that that was sort of what some of the first viruses looked like. Rogue RNA elements.
Guy Windsor
Would that have happened before the first bacterium, so the first single celled organism or after, do you think?
Marli Vlok
Well, I mean, you need a host, right?
Guy Windsor
That’s what I was thinking.
Marli Vlok
I would imagine that you’d need some cellular life before you’d get viruses coming about. I think the current idea is that most of most of the viruses came from like the single celled organisms and then came onto land.
Guy Windsor
And one would imagine that the oldest viruses come from the sea anyway.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. That primordial soup of joy.
Guy Windsor
Which is great for swimming in, because it’s full of shit.
Marli Vlok
So many nutrients, good for your immune system.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so what exactly are you studying at the moment?
Marli Vlok
So I’ve just wrapped up doing some more medical based virology. Like I worked a bit on polio, because we still work on polio, because we’re still not done with that, you’d think. Anyway, that’s depressing. You don’t want to think about that.
Guy Windsor
How come we’re not done with it? I mean, didn’t we sort of fix it, like 60 years ago?
Marli Vlok
Well, I mean, yeah, we have vaccines, if everyone were vaccinated, we wouldn’t have a problem. We had that outbreak just outside of New York. In a community that wasn’t vaccinated. There was a case in the Netherlands that they picked up. The person was asymptomatic, but they picked up polio in wastewater. It’s still around. It is a scary thought. So I did some work on that, and then had to put that down, during COVID to do work on COVID. Because that’s what everyone did.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it’s like my kids aren’t vaccinated for smallpox, because the doctors in Finland said, there’s no need because there’s no smallpox.
Marli Vlok
I’m not vaccinated against smallpox and it terrifies me.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I am vaccinated against smallpox, because when I was little in like, 1978 we were moving to Argentina from Britain, and my grandpa, who’s a doctor, vaccinated me and my sister, and my brother with scraping the arm with the needle sort of thing. And so I have the smallpox scar there. But it’s like, it worries me that my children aren’t vaccinated for smallpox, should I be worried or not worried?
Marli Vlok
I mean, you’re talking to the person who, four years ago, I asked the occupational health nurse if I could have a vaccine against smallpox, and she laughed at me and she was like, why? I was like, why not?
Guy Windsor
Exactly.
Marli Vlok
I stand corrected. But I believe that the monkey pox vaccine, I think there’s one that’s a smallpox and monkey pox vaccine. So you could look into that. I mean, probably out of all the vaccines, it’s the scariest one just of how it’s like administered.
Guy Windsor
I don’t like it either. And I can remember the scratchy scratchy, and then that blister comes up later on. It’s like there. But whereas Polio it’s a sugar cube and you swallow it and you’re done.
Marli Vlok
I think they do advocate to get the injection rather than the oral one. Because the oral one, you can still transmit. I think that’s the way around. Like one of them reverts because it replicates in your gut. And it can revert back to wild type. So while you might not get infected, you can spread it. So I know in Canada, you only get the injection now.
Guy Windsor
Okay. This was a long time ago when I had my sugar cube.
Marli Vlok
Oh, you know, but yeah, so that’s what I was doing. And now I work on less exciting viruses. I work on viral vectors. So therapies, you know, things that they use to deliver genetic therapies to people. And the company looks at, it sounds really horrible when I say it, but it’s like, we essentially try to make these viral vectors do a better job, like infect cells better so they can make more of themselves. So we have more of the therapeutic.
Guy Windsor
How exactly does that work?
Marli Vlok
So it’s small molecules that act on certain pathways in the cell. So it’s a two step process, right? So you put in the genetic material into the cell, so that the cell can make your therapeutic. And that goes by normal viral replication. So that happens in the lab. And so at that production phase, you want to make as much as you can to keep costs down. And so we use small molecules, which essentially are bad for the cell, great for the virus, and then it makes these viral vector particles, which as a therapeutic, they can enter the body, but they don’t necessarily replicate. They’re not an infectious unit.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so it’s what, like a little virusy protein shell with stuff inside and that gets injected into your cells via the protein?
Marli Vlok
Yeah. And it delivers whatever it’s supposed to deliver.
Guy Windsor
Okay, what’s an example of something that might be delivered that way?
Marli Vlok
I mean, we use vaccines. Like we have adenovirus vaccines. I think there’s a bunch of genetic disorders that they try and treat by providing the proteins that might be missing.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So if your DNA is not producing a particular protein, they can inject that protein into the cells.
Marli Vlok
Right. Like the genetic material to.
Guy Windsor
Right, so they may inject the missing gene into the cell, but that won’t combine with the nucleus, it will just start replicating.
Marli Vlok
No, no, we don’t modify people.
Guy Windsor
No. Well, because you’d have to have some kind of mechanism for getting it into the nucleus, and then to getting it in the right place.
Marli Vlok
So some of these viruses do replicate in the nucleus. So they have signals to get to the nucleus. But yeah, I don’t have the joy of getting told exactly where our products go. I have the joy of just making more. Which is kind of sad, because it’s not the fun bit.
Guy Windsor
Were you particularly busy during the pandemic, were all the virologists transferred to COVID stuff?
Marli Vlok
So it kind of depended on who your boss was. So our university shut down, I was working as a postdoc at that point. And the only way you could get access is if you did COVID research. And so we were fortunate, we actually had a level three laboratory. However, there was no virologist trained for it, because they’d been doing mainly TV work. And so we had to go undergo a bunch of training. It was a little surreal in some sense, you know, because you’d go into this really controlled environment. And you’d have this pandemic causing virus, which was very well behaved in the lab, whereas outside people were losing it. It was a strange time. But yeah, so I had two weeks that I worked from home in the pandemic and then the rest I was back in the lab.
Guy Windsor
Okay. What were you doing in the lab?
Marli Vlok
We were trying to set up Coronavirus research because it’s not a virus system that we really worked with at UBC. And so we had to get level two systems set up so that we could get the level three setup. We had to source virus, source cells, write SOPs, get biosafety clearance training. It was a little chaotic.
Guy Windsor
Did anything useful come out of it?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, I think apart from leaving the labs with more model systems, we published a couple of nice papers, but some of them are still being written, because it’s a slow process. But one of the labs I worked with did a really nice proteomic screen, looking at essentially how the virus messes with our proteins. It’s a big screen so it provides a lot of substrates for people to study and it looked at one of the proteins, the protease, which the one of the treatments is against. Because the protease causes a lot of problems.
Guy Windsor
Protease is an enzyme that eats protein.
Marli Vlok
Yes. And so when the virus infects the cells, it uses that protease to cleave its proteins because it makes this huge protein that needs to be chopped up. But it also cleaves a lot of host proteins. And so some of them is like, it sees immune proteins and it’s like, nope, I don’t want an immune response. And it chops it up. So that’s what we looked at, the chaos that ensues from molecular scissors, as we call them.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Okay. Now, I could carry on talk about this for literally for the next hour, but we’ve been chatting for like, half an hour now. And I haven’t actually asked you anything about swords? At least make this peripherally relevant to the usual topic, Guy, come on. All right. So how did you get into historical martial arts?
Marli Vlok
You know, whenever I get asked that question, I always wish that I had a better answer, because I feel like everyone has these amazing answers of I was a little kid, and I loved swords, and, you know, romanticise Renaissance periods. But mine is not nearly as exciting. So, hold on to your seat. It was really much by chance. It wasn’t planned at all. It was during a stage in my PhD, where I realised I was spending way too much time at work, and I needed an extracurricular activity. And so every day, I would read these coupons called Groupons. And I would try to convince my office mate that we should do something. And there was a mad mixture, and she always said, no, no, and I’m not someone who wants to go and try new things by myself. So it’s like, okay, fine, whatever, and it became this ritual. And one day, I read something about fencing. And she said, yes, and I was like, oh, no. What have I done? We went.
Guy Windsor
Where did you go?
Marli Vlok
We went down to Academie Duello, because I was living in Vancouver at that time.
Guy Windsor
Okay, most historical fencing clubs do not run Groupons. And I was thinking of all of the historical fencing clubs in the whole of Canada, the only one I can think of that would probably run a Groupon would be Academie Duello in Vancouver.
Marli Vlok
There you go. And that’s exactly what happened. And we had to choose between the rapier introductory course or the longsword introductory course and I am a sensible person. So I chose the rapier course.
Guy Windsor
Why is that more sensible than longsword, excuse me? Hello. Longswords are very sensible. You get to hold them with two hands. Rapiers are tiring. But you have to go into a great long, stupid lunge holding a big heavy sword with one hand, whereas with longsword, nice short steps with a sword held in two hands, it’s just much less work.
Marli Vlok
Oh yeah. Well, no, honestly, the reason why I chose rapier is because it was the one introductory curriculum that did not mention grappling. I’m not a grappler. I don’t want to grapple with people I don’t know. So that’s how we got to rapier, at that point in time, there was no bias, other than against grappling. And so yeah, we did the introductory course. And I really enjoyed it. And I stayed on and I was a student there since 2013. I eventually ended up teaching, really enjoyed it. I even picked up a longsword. Did some Bolognese. I don’t want to say got stuck, because that has a negative implication to it, but I kind of got sucked in.
Guy Windsor
And you’re still training now?
Marli Vlok
Yes, yes. I think my training has changed a little since we moved to Ottawa.
Guy Windsor
So who are you training with in Ottawa?
Marli Vlok
I am training with two clubs here. I do some Bolognese and a little bit of longsword. And then I do some sabre with the sabre folks who also do Irish stick. I don’t do Irish stick, but Maxime teaches Irish stick.
Guy Windsor
Oh Maxime Chouinard. Okay, he’s been on the show before. So you don’t do rapier then?
Marli Vlok
No, it’s sad. I don’t think either of the clubs they do rapier. And so we haven’t really been doing rapier. We’ll do it at open sparring nights, we’ll bring out the rapier.
Guy Windsor
Do you not want to set up like a study group within one of the clubs and do a bit of rapier?
Marli Vlok
Maybe, you’re not the first person to say this. I’m definitely not opposed to it. Like we moved to Ottawa November, so trying to find our feet. But yeah, we have some friends that we train with in the backyard. We’re working up to rapier, we’re doing some foil and we’ll get to the bigger weapons.
Guy Windsor
Well, speaking of bigger weapons, flags. So first off, when we were sort of initially getting in touch about you coming on the podcast, and a mutual friend recommended you for the show and they mentioned flag waving. The first thing that came to my head was Alfieri who has a section on flag waving. Is that the sort of basically battlefield signaling flag? Is that what we’re talking about?
Marli Vlok
Yes. I’m still sort of trying to figure out exactly where in the world of flag waving I fit in. But yes, that is the very first text I read. That is the text that I based flag size on, after I realized my flag was too small. Okay, I looked a fair bit in because there is a living tradition of flag waving.
Guy Windsor
There is, in Italy.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, it’s big in Europe. I actually talked to a group in Germany, and they were so helpful. They sent me so much material, I learned so much about flag waving through this group. There’s a whole federation, apparently. And what I learned was that there’s a lot of diversity in flagwaving, and that the living tradition is very performative, which is not a bad thing. But you watch some of those videos are amazing.
Guy Windsor
I’ve seen it live. It’s incredible.
Marli Vlok
I actually bought some of their flag poles because I was like, there’s no way my flagpole could do this. I was like, the balance is, it’s trippy.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So firstly, tell us what kind of flag are you waving? How big is it? How long is the pole? How big is the actual flag itself?
Marli Vlok
I have two right now. I have the one that I made to start with, where which is loosely based on the sizes they have in Italy, which is the pole’s about as tall as me. Oh, it’s a little shorter than me. So it’s like 170 centimeters. And it has a synthetic fabric flag. I went to a flag shop, I was like, make me a flag.
Guy Windsor
How big is the flag?
Marli Vlok
It’s 110 centimeters by 110.
Guy Windsor
It’s square and 110. That’s pretty big. There isn’t actually that much pole left to hold on to.
Marli Vlok
No, not a lot. So this is one handed, backtrack. All of the manuals show one handed flagwaving. If you look at the living tradition in Europe, they have three types of flags they use. The smaller flag is one handed, there is a big one, which they use two handed. And my understanding was that there is a group in Belgium that used to do it one handed because that was the traditional way, but they couldn’t keep up with the tricks. So they had to use two hands. But yeah, my very first flagpole was literally, this was in COVID, right? It’s a piece of PVC pipe that I put the flag on. And I put washers in the bottom so it had a bit of weight closer to my hand. And then I sat down, because I’m a sucker for punishment, and took the manuals and tried to measure because they didn’t have any measurements. I think the only measurement we see is somewhere in Wiktenauer, I think Colombani says the flagpole should be roughly as tall as you that’s the only measurement I could find. And so I measured. I measured people, I measured flag length, I measured pole length, and I almost went nuts. I made boxplots, I took the average. I tried with three different manuals. Alfieri was by far the easiest to measure. And it turns out that my flagpole was a lot smaller than what they wanted. And so I don’t remember the exact specifications but essentially, if I stand up and I stretch my arm out to the heavens, that’s about how tall my flagpole is, the big one.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so probably about eight feet.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, probably. I’m like 180 centimetres.
Guy Windsor
You’re not going to use that one handed.
Marli Vlok
I have been. It’s hard. That’s why I start with a little one.
Guy Windsor
Bloody hell, and with a great big flappy bit of cloth on the end of it. That’s going to be murder.
Marli Vlok
So the flag is bigger, right? I think the flag is 160 centimeters. This one’s also square. It’s huge. And so I actually bought an aluminium pole. Similar to the ones they in the States, they use them for colour guard, like they have the tall one, which was the right length. So I was like, yes, I don’t have to use a piece of PVC pipe, which warps like crazy. And that comes with weights, which was a little easier. But yeah, definitely start off with a little guy. Can’t do as much with the big one.
Guy Windsor
So what do you what are you doing with the flag?
Marli Vlok
So I worked my way through Alfieri’s techniques.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Most people listening will never have seen this book. I have only ever seen it once.
Marli Vlok
It’s for free.
Guy Windsor
So but okay, what are the sort of movements like? Are you swinging around like a sword? Are you waving it back and forth over your head?
Marli Vlok
A lot of it actually is described as sword actions, right. He’s got mandritti and reversi. Coming down on squalembrato lines. But there’s a giant piece of fabric, right? So you cannot bring it down as low as you would a sword because you don’t want it to hit the ground. And so there’s some modifications to that. But the body movements are actually very similar, you need to use your whole body. You can’t just wave from the shoulder because you’re going to hate your life. So it has a lot of actions like that. He has a couple of throws. So passing it from one hand to the other because he has a very strong opinion about using both arms, which is good. It’s a really good way, as someone who does a lot of rapier and who doesn’t use the left arm, it’s a really good way of getting that side of the body engaged again. He has mollinelli, he has actions where you grab the flagpole in the middle to do that figure eight type of action. He has a pass around the neck, which is a little more fancy. So you do a circular action. And then essentially put the middle of the flagpole on your neck. So if you’re coming in a clockwise coming around your head, so it’s coming from your right, put the flagpole on your neck, and you essentially swing it around, so you can catch it in the middle of the flagpole on the other side of your body. And then he has a bunch of passing it under the leg, which is just fancy.
Guy Windsor
So what is it all for?
Marli Vlok
What is it all for, for me, or what was it all for historically?
Guy Windsor
Well, let’s start with historical and they go to you.
Marli Vlok
My understanding was a lot of it originated from battlefield signaling. And apparently, each group would have their own secret sequence or techniques, so that you knew if someone else had stolen your flag, because they wouldn’t do that super secret technique that only your people knew. Which was kind of interesting. My understanding is that ensigns were also responsible for uplifting the spirits of the troops, and doing the rah rah. So there was a performative aspect to it, especially if you came back from the battlefield, having been victorious with your flag intact, you walk into the city and you look fancy, and everyone goes, ooh.
Guy Windsor
So historically, it starts out as practical battlefield signaling and becomes a performance for morale and other things. Okay. So why do you do it?
Marli Vlok
Because it’s a lot of fun. Who doesn’t want to partake in something described as noble exercises of artistry and grace? I mean, good adjectives, sold it. Again, I got into this in a very odd manner.
Guy Windsor
How did you get into it?
Marli Vlok
I was working on assessments through Duello. And one of the assessments was to interpret a bunch of assalti from the text. And everyone has an opinion about how you interpret assalti and there were so many keyboard warriors. And it was just exhausting. And I wanted something that was a little more true to the exercise, taking something that I don’t have all this noise and chaos I could actually engage with and test my own hypotheses. And so that’s how I got onto Alfieri’s flag. And I was like, well, would you allow it? Can I try this? I’ll still do three Bolognese assalti, but can I interpret this? And it was a lot of fun. I think it was true to the exercise. I think I learned so much more, because I couldn’t just get frustrated and go onto YouTube and see what x y and z had to say. I’d be like, Okay, that looks like a good enough interpretation. And so just having that freedom to test your own hypotheses, and fail, like I failed way more than what I would have if I had done something.
Guy Windsor
It’s like 20 years ago. Before YouTube, when we were figuring out historical martial arts from scratch, like in the 90s. It was great. I mean, it’s better now, if you just want to get good at swords quickly. Now is much better than then. But if you actually want to figure it out, there isn’t much left, that hasn’t been figured out.
Marli Vlok
I mean, there’s a lot of details that we could do better on.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, there are lots of sources that haven’t been properly studied and whatnot. But generally speaking, it’s quite easy to come up with a historical longsword system, because there are loads of them. And they have been published in various ways, and it’s a lot easier than it used to be. So I totally get that it’s nice doing your own thing. Here’s a question that popped into my head earlier. What have you got on your flag? What is it a flag of?
Marli Vlok
Right now I have nothing on my flag. I have a blue flag because I like blue.
Guy Windsor
So it’s just plain blue.
Marli Vlok
I have a teal blue flag, which is the small one and then the big one is white and blue because that was the fabric. I have a design in mind.
Guy Windsor
What’s the design? You don’t have to tell us.
Marli Vlok
Oh, man. No, no, no, no, that’s fine. So I took a little bit of inspiration from the modern flags. I also have guinea pigs. I love my guinea pigs. I’m a big pet person.
Guy Windsor
So actual real guinea pigs, not humans you test on?
Marli Vlok
Real guinea pigs. They’re over there. They haven’t squeaked yet. And so I’ve been working on a design of a Bolognese inspired guinea pig.
Guy Windsor
Ah, fantastic.
Marli Vlok
Which will one day go on the flag, with a poofy hat and everything and the chubby cheeks under it.
Guy Windsor
Oh my god. Do you know? Pavel, what was his surname? Oh.
Marli Vlok
The Chinchillas. Yes. I have seen images.
Guy Windsor
I have one of his prints in the next room. Fantastic. Yeah.
Marli Vlok
It’s not going to be that good.
Guy Windsor
Well, why don’t why Pavel to do it for you? I hired him to do a book cover for me. He’s lovely to work with. And he does amazing work. So just hire him.
Marli Vlok
Okay. Oh, maybe I will. I have a high standard though. Some people don’t draw guinea pigs well. But I guess if you can make chinchillas look good you can probably do guinea pigs.
Guy Windsor
I think Pavel could probably handle it.
Marli Vlok
But yeah, that’s the plan. That’s the plan for the flag. I have some completely white flags that are just waiting.
Guy Windsor
To have a Bolognese guinea pig on it. That’s a great idea. Okay, so there’s this modern tradition of flag waving? How does it relate to or compare with the stuff in the historical sources?
Marli Vlok
I mean, I think they’ve stripped it down and made it much more flourishy. So there’s sections in the old manuals, which we just don’t see at all. They’re sections about how to defend the flag so you see thrusts with a flag. There are sections with sword and flag, which is actually a lot of fun. But we don’t see any of that defensive aspect, they’ve gone a lot more to high throws, very much choreographed. Very gymnastic, and much, much lighter poles. When I first got one of their poles it sucked because I was like all the weight’s in my hand. I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t have like metres extending my hand, that’s heavy. It is very different. The Germans that I’ve spoken to, they know of the old manuals, they reference them. But the techniques are very, very different.
Guy Windsor
That’s what you’d expect with a living tradition. I mean, things change over time. Which actually brings me on to, we can come back to flags anytime you just have to wave a flag and then we’ll change the subject. But, okay, right now you’re studying classical fencing with Eric Myers. I know Eric quite well. I have forgotten the name of the Italian classical fencing stuff that he does. Remind me of the name.
Marli Vlok
It’s through the fencing master’s certification program. The book was written by Dr. Gaugler.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So William Gaugler’s system so, Maestro Sean Hayes is also qualified in that system. Okay. So I guess my real question is, he’s in California, if I remember rightly. And you’re in Ottawa. And that is basically as far apart as you can get whilst remaining in North America.
Marli Vlok
Thanks for rubbing that in.
Guy Windsor
So how do you do it long distance?
Marli Vlok
So we actually started this, the week before COVID hit. He was in Vancouver for an event and I was like, hey, I’m interested in this, Adrian’s interested, we’ll buy the stuff. Can you give us a crash course when you’re up here? And he did. And then the world went into lockdown. And we’re like, well, what do we do with ourselves? And it just was such a natural transition. Because we have the foils, we had just had this crash course. There were two of us.
Guy Windsor
Is Adrian your partner? So you’re living in the same house? So you have some of the train with in the same houw. Right.
Marli Vlok
So much simpler, right? We could go out every day, we could work through the book. Whenever we got into a spot of trouble, send off a message to Eric be like, I don’t understand what does this mean? You know, video recordings, live streams, that sort of thing. Oh, absolutely. Two people, so much easier. I couldn’t do this by myself.
Guy Windsor
Well, I mean, I’ve given fencing lessons over the internet, where there was just the one person on the other end of zoom call. And so all you can really do is mechanics stuff. And that is so frustrating. Because if I’m in the room, I can get somebody moving nicely in seconds. But when it’s translated through a screen, it just takes me five or 10 minutes to get an effect that I can get in literally 10 seconds in person.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. Because you can’t move something. You have to use words and hope they carry the same meaning to that person.
Guy Windsor
And you can show it to them, but you can’t say follow me. Oh, god. Okay, so I’m feeling a little bit sorry for Eric. But if there’s two of you, it is easier.
Marli Vlok
It’s okay. He’s a very nice man and very patient.
Guy Windsor
He is yes, he’s a lot more patient than I am, if truth be told. Okay, so how are you getting on with it? Are you planning to certify in that system?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, so just before we move to Ottawa, we actually had him up for a workshop in Vancouver. Which was nice to do some in person stuff. It was also really nice to have other people in the school be exposed to it. And then the plan is in July to go down to take the class. And then the year after that, we will hopefully test, if nerves prevail. I don’t like tests.
Guy Windsor
There are three levels, aren’t there? So you’ll be testing for the first level next year.
Marli Vlok
So we’ve done the theory course, because that was easy to do in COVID. And then, yeah, just getting the credits and getting whipped into shape in person. I’m a little worried about it.
Guy Windsor
Eric’s very nice. He’ll be very nice. I know classical fencing masters who are not that nice in person. But Eric will be very gentle, I’m sure. When Eric came up for that the first post COVID seminar, the training you’ve done at home, how well did it fit with what he was actually trying to teach you? How close was it?
Marli Vlok
I mean, for the most part, I think it went reasonably well. We had done primarily foil. And then we picked up some sabre because why not? And I think at least for me, the sabre was a little harder, because I hadn’t had that crash course on it. And that was all from the book. I think the part that was the hardest to do in person was actions on the blade, because there’s a lot more nuance, which two of us flopping around outside being like, oh, no, the sword moved. Yeah, we must have done it right. Sure. And just getting the cues more precise. It was fine tuning.
Guy Windsor
That’s why it’s taken so very long to get historical fencing systems right. Because you can get the gross actions quite straightforwardly from the text and the pictures usually, but that nuance of how exactly are you applying this? How exactly, what exactly you’re doing to get this response that you want? And of course, there being no living tradition, we have no way of knowing we’re getting it right. But I think we’re a lot closer than we used to be.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, I hope so. You all have been putting a lot of effort into it. It would be miserable to be like, yeah, no, wasted effort. Sorry, guys. I don’t think it’s a wasted effort.
Guy Windsor
And even if we are completely wrong, if Fiore up in my house one day and says Guy, I’ve been spinning in my grave so bloody hard, I’m reanimated, and I’ve come around to show you how to do it properly, so I can get back to being dead, then that will be great. But even if it turns out that we are massively wrong about certain things, I think it’s still worth doing it.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, it’s a great exercise, right?
Guy Windsor
Honestly, there are more efficient ways to exercise.
Marli Vlok
No, no. I mean, like the academic exercise.
Guy Windsor
Oh, yeah, sure. It’s a great academic exercise. I do have to ask you about the shooting. Because weapons are weapons. And I do a bit of pistol shooting myself. But what sort of target shooting were you doing? And how’d you get into that? And how come you represented South Africa for 10 years?
Marli Vlok
Oh, good question.
Guy Windsor
I’ve spent enough time in Africa to know that there’s a lot of people who can shoot really well, like really, really well, it’s kind of a cultural thing. So your shooting must be really pretty bloody good.
Marli Vlok
I used to do 22 Long Rifle. Single shot bolt action. And I grew up in a house where you were taught gun safety from a very young age. My dad had a lot of firearms, he was a big hunter. I grew up around firearms. He was also the coach for our high school target shooting team. So much like in the UK, we have target shooting teams associated with schools. And so when I got to high school, I’m the only child there were no boys, even though for a long time it was a male centric sport. And so he was like, why don’t you come try out and you do things to please your parents. And so I was like, yeah, sure, we’re fine, whatever. And I went, I tried, didn’t try very hard. But you know, got a shot at a target. And it wasn’t great. But whatever. You know, I tried, right? That’s what was asked of me. And as I was leaving practice, I overheard a really snide comment from one of the guys on the team about how poorly this had gone for me, and I don’t remember what the comment was. I just remember, you know that feeling. SO I did what most girls do, I went home and I was upset and I had a good cry. And then I was like, okay, you know what, bugger this, we’re going to do this. We’re going to put some effort in. We’re going to get better at this because apparently spite is sometimes an excellent motivator. And that’s what I did. I went back, I was like, okay, Dad, we’re doing this. We’re training, let’s do this. I used to train three days a week. We put in two, three hours a day. And I proved the point, I made the team. And then I made the provincial team. And then I realised that actually, I could do better than this. And then it became a personal thing. Then it wasn’t really more about proving a point, because the point had long since been surpassed. Then it just became about beating myself, doing better and more accuracy and precision. And the nice thing about the way the system was set up in South Africa was there was always another milestone. There was always another team you could try for, you could be on the senior team as a junior, as a school kid. And so that’s just how I climbed the ranks. Just must do better, do better.
Guy Windsor
You got to the South African national team, correct?
Marli Vlok
I did. I did.
Guy Windsor
Where did you compete?
Marli Vlok
I had an abysmal Commonwealth Games. Turns out when your stock’s cracked, not great for shooting, but you know what are you going to do?
Guy Windsor
The stock of your rifle was cracked?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, we had fiberglass bedding in it right to keep the action to sit nice and tight. And that had cracked on the trip over to Australia.
Guy Windsor
Did you not find out until afterwards?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, just that. But that’s okay. It was a good experience. It was a humbling experience. I did a lot of competitions in the UK. Which went really well, won a couple of their junior competitions and their women’s competitions. Until I got to their X class, which was a sad day, because there’s really good shooters in the UK, the competition was fierce.
Guy Windsor
What is the X class?
Marli Vlok
They have classes based on what your average scores are. And so they start with D class, which is beginners and then you work your way up. And they have X class is like their top class. It’s like where the British team normally gets selected from, but a foreigner is not allowed to enter into X class. You can’t just show up and be like, put me in X class. That’s very rude. You enter as A class, and they will decide if you’re worthy of being pushed into X. It’s a huge honour.
Guy Windsor
And you were pushed into X class.
Marli Vlok
Yes. But I was very grumpy because there was a lot of competition. I think the last competition I did was the first year I was in Canada, I participated in the University Games in China. Which went really well. I came in second. No, I came in third. That’s right. Third, because third is better, because then you’re grateful that you actually medalled, as opposed to being sad that you lost.
Guy Windsor
So why did you stop?
Marli Vlok
It was just logistics. In Vancouver, the range was far away. I cycle everywhere. I can’t cycle with a long rifle on the back of my bike. And so I used to go with a neighbour of mine. But then my neighbour moved out of the city and so went my lift and so I was like, okay, well, you know. I have an infrared kit, a five meter indoor kit. So every once in a while, like I pull it out, but yeah, no more competition. Maybe one day, maybe one day when I live close to a range again.
Guy Windsor
To my mind, shooting and swords are kind of diametrically opposed. Because when I’m shooting, I’m trying to take myself out of the equation as much as possible. So I should be completely still. And only my trigger finger is moving, and it’s moving just the right amount and no more. Everything else is completely still. And the gun does all the work and the gun goes off almost by surprise. And hopefully the hole in the paper appears in the right place. Whereas when you’re swinging a sword, you actually have to move the damn thing.
Marli Vlok
Yes, it’s really annoying, isn’t it? You can’t just like think it into play. I’d be such a good fencer if I could just think my sword into play.
Guy Windsor
So have you found that the shooting has complimented your swords and flags at all, or not?
Marli Vlok
I think so. but I think it’s in a less obvious manner. I think what shooting toward me, because it’s such an individual sport, is that it taught me to be well prepared to rely on myself and my capabilities, to read environments, because you have wind, you have mirage, but you can only do so much about it. And I think that to some extent is translated to fencing. I can go in and I can get freaked out about having to stand opposite someone and fence, or I can rest assured that I have practiced, I’ve put in the time, I have a plan, I might have to change my plan, depending on the conditions, also known as what the person opposite me is doing. But that I put in the practice and that I should be capable of doing that. So just like calming things down a little, having that that little more Zen approach to it, I think, has been really helpful. I know a lot of people get really hyped up. I tried to do the opposite. Because once I get hyped up, I do dumb things. And then people who have been in coaching positions, look at me, and they’re like, why? And that’s just embarrassing. No one wants to be asked, why did you do that dumb thing. So calming things down. It’s also really good training for getting your heart rate down. Which means you don’t get tired as quickly.
Guy Windsor
What do you do to get your heart rate down?
Marli Vlok
I have to think a lot of calm thoughts, not talk to people. I put headphones in. And again, it’s that centering thing, trying to find that it’s okay, you’ve practiced, it’s good. You’ve got this, like that positive talk. And a lot of deep breaths.
Guy Windsor
I was going to say, my standard tool for bringing my heart rate down is a short inhale and a long exhale.
Marli Vlok
Yep, I do take a lot of long exhales.
Guy Windsor
So incidentally, do you pull the trigger on the exhale? Or when lungs are empty or when the lungs are full? Or on the inhale?
Marli Vlok
Oh, it’s been a while. I used to exhale.
Guy Windsor
So you’d be breathing out. And as you’re breathing out, the gun will go off?
Marli Vlok
Yes. I think I was more consistent at releasing the same amount of air from my lungs, than inhaling the same amount. And I think also, I was more aware of once I got oxygen deprived from not having taken that breath, like if I’ve waited too long, like it was easier for me to recognise that it’d be like abort, abort. Oxygen, breathe. Let’s try again. As opposed to sort of being in the middle.
Guy Windsor
Yes. It’s why I think those biathletes are incredible. They ski like fuck, and then they shoot accurately. It’s like how the hell do you do that?
Marli Vlok
Right? Yes.
Guy Windsor
Because your heart rate is probably up at 160 when you’re doing that skiing, and then you want it down to 60 in like, two seconds, and the whole thing is timed.
Marli Vlok
You know how many people have asked me? Oh, so you’re going to try biathlon now that you live in a place that’s got a lot of snow and I’m like, no it looks really hard.
Guy Windsor
I mean, just from a physiological perspective, it’s hard. It’s amazing what those guys can do.
Marli Vlok
It is admirable.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, just an awful lot of work. I’ve done cross country skiing a couple of times and I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not my thing at all. When I was in Finland, there was some students would ski to class because in Finland some of your bike trails in winter they are ski trails and you can ski all over the place. And it’s very bad manners to step on a ski track.
Marli Vlok
I can imagine that. You’d ruin the track.
Guy Windsor
As people go over the same snowy track they create these kind of grooves which are lovely to ski on apparently and it’s very, very bad manners to step on those. If you are in Finland and you see these mysterious parallel smooth lines in the snow don’t step on them.
Marli Vlok
Noted.
Guy Windsor
So I get skiing to class, nice physical warm up and then doing sword swinging swords around for a while, that makes sense to me. But then skiing super fast and then slowing everything down to take careful shots.
Marli Vlok
We’re talking top of the game athletes. Not going to lie, it is my favorite event to watch at the Winter Olympics.
Guy Windsor
Because you understand how hard it is in a way that most people don’t.
Marli Vlok
Adrian gives me these looks because I’ll sit down and be like, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Because you can see that rifle wobbling you’re like, oh, no. It’s like you’re there, you’re living vicariously through them and struggling a lot.
Guy Windsor
Now, there are a couple of questions I asked most of my guests. You’ve done lots of things like virology and historical marital arts and historical flag waving and shooting rifles and whatnot. What is the best idea you haven’t acted on yet?
Marli Vlok
I don’t know, I have a lot of ideas. I’m not sure that they’re always appropriate to vocalise in public?
Guy Windsor
Well, we can edit out anything you say, so feel free.
Marli Vlok
I think this is maybe not the best idea. But it was an interesting idea. You sort of touched on it, we were like, would it be really helpful if we could clone some of those old masters and get all of our questions answered. And I was like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. But then when I actually went through the biology, I was like, oh, no, man, you’re going to have to take some guy from 17th century Italy. And like, let him loose in this world. You’re probably never going to get the same master, so then I scratched it. I was like, this is a terrible idea.
Guy Windsor
You’re right. The fencing knowledge is not embedded in the DNA. It’s a terrible idea. Lamarck was wrong.
Marli Vlok
But it wouldn’t be nice, though, if we lived in a world where this could be accomplished.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Do you have any more practical ideas?
Marli Vlok
Yes. Retirement. That is like my biggest idea right now? It’s not a new idea. But retirement. Seems like a good idea.
Guy Windsor
What would you do when you retire?
Marli Vlok
I want to live somewhere that’s not a big city, but has water and electricity and internet. And a good vet. That’s required. I have so many hobbies that I don’t get around to.
Guy Windsor
I know just the place. I know just the place. In the middle of New Zealand. A friend of mine has a farm, sort of in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got running water, electricity. And she is a proper, really good vet. Now my father was a vet, so I know vets and she is a very good vet and she keeps horses and cows and rides and whatnot. And she’s very lovely. And she lives in the middle of New Zealand. So you can get to Auckland in like an hour or so. And Wellington.
Marli Vlok
Does that mean I have to become an All Blacks fan? Because I don’t know…
Guy Windsor
No. The New Zealanders are a very nice and many New Zealanders come from elsewhere. And so they understand that you being South African, you may you may prefer a different rugby team. And they’re very nice. But if you if you decide you want to move to New Zealand and live in a hut on Lizzie’s farm, I will happily put you in touch. It’s exactly what you described. It even has the vet.
Marli Vlok
It sounds idyllic. I can actually get like there’s so many fencing manuals I’ve been meaning to go through and I just haven’t had enough time.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And she’s shacked up with a really good friend of mine who is, get this, he’s one of the best rapier people in the southern hemisphere.
Marli Vlok
Okay, okay. Well, I will tell Adrian that we will have to move to New Zealand.
Guy Windsor
Go move in with Lizzy and Matt, you’ll have a great time.
Marli Vlok
That sounds great. You just solved my problem. So there you go. I’m glad I copped out on that question. New Zealand, I didn’t consider New Zealand. You don’t have some friends like that who are also vets in the middle of Canada?
Guy Windsor
Not in Canada. Sorry. A know a vet in Bali.
Marli Vlok
A little too hot.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, actually speaking of which, a chap called Alan, a friend of my father’s who flew his single engine plane from Uganda to Australia in 1975. Yes, he did. Not in one go, obviously. He had to go basically up across Arabia and then through Asia and then down through Indonesia. Because it has like a total flying time of a six or seven hour range. Which is like, absolute maximum, maybe 600 miles. So yeah, he’s a very interesting man. He had his wife in the front seat and two small children in the back. I’m currently reading his wife’s memoir of the trip. Oh, dear God.
Marli Vlok
We had to drive across Canada, Vancouver to Ottawa. And I don’t think our sanity was completely intact by the end. And we only had two guinea pigs in the back, and swords and a gun.
Guy Windsor
You should have flown it.
Marli Vlok
We were planning on it but none of the airlines would take the guinea pigs in the cabin.
Guy Windsor
No, I mean, in a small aircraft, a single engine aircraft, learn to fly and then just fly it. Super fun.
Marli Vlok
I don’t know. I mean, we have a lot of swords. I don’t know that they would all have fit.
Guy Windsor
True. You can just ship those. Ship all your stuff.
Marli Vlok
But I’m so attached to them. What if they get lost, I won’t be able to replace them.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, but your car could get stolen when you’re stopping off for petrol or something.
Marli Vlok
I grew up in South Africa, I’m very vigilant about that. There was always someone in a car.
Guy Windsor
Just the other day, one of my daughters said, because I’m fixing up the front door of our house. And I was talking to her about some technical bit about the lock or something. And she said, Daddy, you are very security conscious. I’m not really. Not compared to some of my friends. But yeah, I would never put my passport in a bag and carry the bag. Because if somebody’s going to snatch something it’s going to be your bag, right? The passport is always somewhere where you can’t just fish it out of the pocket. It’s always a pain in the arse getting my passport out.
Marli Vlok
I’m sure customs just loves you.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, go anywhere dodgy you take two wallets, one with like store cards and stuff in and some small denomination bills so it all looks real. Because honestly, if somebody does ask for your wallet, and you have to give it to them, they don’t check the expiry dates on the credit cards. They really don’t. They just take the wallet. And hopefully we then go away and leave you. My children have spent most of their life in Finland, and half in Finland, half of it here in the UK, which is relatively safe. So I think yeah, we should maybe go and live in Africa for a bit. Like I did when I was young.
Marli Vlok
There you go. When I first moved to Canada, I was terrified. I didn’t have bars on my window. I couldn’t sleep the first couple of nights. Someone’s going to climb in 100%. I need bars.
Guy Windsor
I get it. But actually, honestly, here with a security glass and stuff, it takes them so long to bash their way and you’ve got time to dig your rifle out and load it. Not dig the rifle out. Call the police and the police have time to get there. That’s what I meant to say. I didn’t mention guns, that would be wrong.
Marli Vlok
You say you’re not going to take out your longsword?
Guy Windsor
No, no, no. Swords are not well adapted for close quarters stuff. And it’s better to just wave a big kitchen knife and tell people to go away.
Marli Vlok
There you go. While calling the police.
Guy Windsor
Having called the police beforehand, ideally. Very loudly so they can hear that you’re doing it. Okay, we’re getting into very silly territory. So let me ask you my final question, which is, somebody gives you a million dollars to spend improving historical martial arts or flag waving worldwide. How would you spend it?
Marli Vlok
I feel like this is a trap. Standardisation, which might not be a popular answer. Well, in my mind, I generally separate the competitive more sporty side of historical martial arts to like, the more academic historical practice. I think standardisation can apply to both. But I think in the competition side, I think we need some governing bodies, you know, some standardised rule sets, some certified referees, you know, it’s just like some standardisation, like we see in other sports. If you’re going to establish yourself as a sport, I think you need regulations.
Guy Windsor
Games require rules that everyone agrees on.
Marli Vlok
I don’t do tournaments, but I have friends who do. I watch the videos and I hear the gripes after. And I think having that sort of standardization would just be great. I mean, we had certified range officers on the shooting range. It’s not like they had to do much, but they had to be certified. And so why not have certified referees at HEMA events?
Guy Windsor
Money. I’m giving you imaginary chunks of money. So one of the things you would do is use that to, I guess, for it to be worth somebody getting certified they’d probably need to be getting paid for what they’re doing. Either you either you subsidise the certification or you subsidise the thing that they need to be certified to do. Or both. And standardisation of equipment?
Marli Vlok
Yeah, I mean, we’re moving awfully close to sport fencing here.
Guy Windsor
It’s already sport fencing. Each is tournament is a little bit different, has different rule sets. And there are lots of different weapons you can do. But it’s already sport fencing, and as soon as you have a tournament and a prize and rules that everyone agrees on, and safety equipment requirements, it’s a kind of sport fencing already.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. So in that case, yes. Some standardisation of equipment, like equipment control. I don’t know what it looks like right now at tournaments. But I’d imagine there’s some level of it, but I think having a standardised, accepted, weapons control would be nice. So you don’t pitch up there with your rapier that your uncle made out of some rebar in the backyard. And you’re like, yep. I know that sounds horrible.
Guy Windsor
So you’d put the money into the sports side, not the historical side.
Marli Vlok
I’d split it.
Guy Windsor
So what would you do with the rest of the money?
Marli Vlok
I would like to see, maybe this is from being in academia for too long. But I would like to see us reach a point where I would like to see lineages come alive. I’d like to see people agreeing on this is the art and they don’t have to agree completely. But you know, having working groups to establish more so. I think a lot of people did that for a while, like I can imagine when you guys started off, there was a lot of cross chatter about what’s this guy on? What’s Fiore’s third arm doing?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. The thing is though, I would say that for all practical purposes, if you look at how we execute the plays choreographically most Fiore scholars are, like 90%, at least fundamentally the same. There are differences in the tactical interpretation side of things. And there are differences in training. There are differences in nuances of mechanics. I mean, like, giving you an example. The first time I went to Academie Duello as an instructor to an event was the first time I saw Devon’s students facing rapier. And I saw how they lunged. I saw their back foot and what it did.
Marli Vlok
Okay, well, now you have to elaborate.
Guy Windsor
They’re doing Capoferro rapier, right? And in Capoferro’s Il Gran Simulacro, plate five is the picture of the lunge. And it has these letters all over it, saying which bits is doing what. And the letter L is the back foot with its turn. So it says in the book, the back foot is supposed to turn. So when you lunge the back foot goes from being flat on the ground to turning in some manner or another. Now, the way I interpret it is a turn on the ball of the foot, which pushes the heel forward and pushes the leg forward so the hip is forward and I get precisely, because I’ve measured this, five inches of additional reach with that particular term. What I saw Devon’s students doing was basically rolling the back foot onto its edge, which also gives you some more reach. But to my mind, there are mechanical issues with that which make it a less good interpretation. But here’s the thing. It was clear to me that they were doing this because their instructor had interpreted the letter L on plate five in this particular way, which is different to the way I interpret it. But when you can see, literally, the line in the book where you have a different reading when people are fencing, then they’re doing historical fencing. It’s like, we are definitely on the same page. It is just this particular line on this particular page we read differently.
Marli Vlok
You see, me again, this is just my obsession with textbooks, I would love a textbook that has Capoferro rapier documented with here are different interpretations of the same thing. But that’s just because I like having things complete.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but the thing is, it is probable that Capoferro had a specific turn of the foot in mind. It might be mine. It might be Devon’s, it might be some different way of turning the foot that neither one of us has come up with. I don’t see any need to document all of the variations when so many of them that one sees on the internet are clearly not correct.
Marli Vlok
Right. But then you could provide more correct interpretations. Like you could have three interpretations that seem good enough within the context and disregard some insane interpretation. So again, Capoferro has been around for a long time, right?
Guy Windsor
Yeah, 413 years.
Marli Vlok
Well, but even modern people have looked at Capoferro for a long time. We’re busy reading the Neapolitans. And that’s brought up a lot of questions. Which I don’t have answers to, which is really annoying. How would you describe a Neapolitan lunge? How would you describe the execution of a Neapolitan lunge?
Guy Windsor
I wouldn’t, because I don’t do Neapolitan lunges. I do Capoferro, because I’m sensible. Just for the non-specialists listening because a lot of people listening are longsword people, Neapolitan: who are the Neapolitan masters? They are from Naples, obviously, but what’s the period?
Marli Vlok
So this is later in the 17th century? I don’t remember the exact dates. But we’re talking about Marcelli, Mattei. I guess Pallavicini’s in there, and they’re from Sicily. And I think one thing that stands out for me from them is that they have this, we like to call it the starfish lunge.
Guy Windsor
It’s a lot more upright.
Marli Vlok
Yes. With rapier and dagger, right. And, yeah, it doesn’t seem to cover an awful lot of ground. I’m worried about my knees.
Guy Windsor
But do you not worry about your knees doing Capoferro? The knee goes further forward over the toes for Capoferro.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, but it’s softer. It’s in a more comfortable position. And maybe it’s just because I’ve trained it. And at least I know which muscles I should be working to support it.
Guy Windsor
I’d say that the Neapolitan lunge basically is closer to a classical fencing lunge.
Marli Vlok
With a straight front leg? See, I don’t know. I just really want some people who know what the hell is going on to sit down and give me a nice workbook that I can work from.
Guy Windsor
Well, I’ve done that for Capoferro.
Marli Vlok
So can you get on the Neapolitans?
Guy Windsor
I did that in 2006. Oh, this is a podcast, right? So I can say what I like. Yes. Second Edition of that 2006 book is literally, this is a proof copy that arrived last week. It is this close to being actually published. It’s the Duellist’s Companion Second Edition. So that’s like detailed Capoferro interpretation. I absolutely could do that for Marcelli, for example. Not sure I want to though. Because it’s not different enough to be interesting enough.
Marli Vlok
Okay. Okay. So when you say different enough, you’re looking for a complete different weapon?
Guy Windsor
Or a different way of using it. It’s not that different. I mean, some of the mechanics are a little bit different, but I mean, look at Fabris and Capoferro. Mechanically wildly different.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, yeah.
Guy Windsor
But even then, in terms of what the blades are actually doing most of the time, they’re pretty similar. So, you know, I’m not sure that that spending a year or two doing Marcelli would up my rapier game sufficiently for it to be worth the time.
Marli Vlok
That’s fair. So I need to get someone else to do it.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Unless, okay, here’s the thing. If somebody sends me an original copy of Marcelli.
Marli Vlok
Oh, wow, you don’t come cheap, eh?
Guy Windsor
I do not come cheap. Because I have an original Fabris and I have an original Capoferro and I have an original Marozzo. But I don’t have an original Marcelli. So how can I possibly work from?
Marli Vlok
Well, there you go internet. Send the man an original copy of Marcelli if you want him to make you a nice book.
Guy Windsor
It’ll be there in my house and I’ll get it out so we can then get a copy of any pictures and translate
Marli Vlok
Oh those pictures are really ugly.
Guy Windsor
Yes, but you still have to have them. Because you have to interpret them. And then an academic and practical interpretation of Marcelli. It’s not difficult, honestly. It’s just quite time consuming. And from my perspective, not massively interesting from a fencing perspective. But there we go. So actually, you could use some of your million dollars to buy me a copy of Marcelli?
Marli Vlok
Oh, can we make it a million pounds instead? Because it’ll go further.
Guy Windsor
Honestly, it’s imaginary money so you have as much as you want.
Marli Vlok
Ah, well, in that case, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would spend that on getting you an original copy of Marcelli.
Guy Windsor
And they’re not that expensive. I saw one online recently for, if memory serves, I may be confusing it with a different book. I think it was around three grand. It’s expensive, but in terms of like, flying lessons, that’s not a lot of time in the sky.
Marli Vlok
Okay. So just so we’re clear, you’re not willing to give up a couple of like flight hours for your copy of Marcelli?
Guy Windsor
No. Because honestly, the flying blows my mind. And the Marcelli is just interesting.
Marli Vlok
I mean, sounds like you’ve got your priorities straight.
Guy Windsor
Well, I have my priorities, whether they are straight or not, who knows.
Marli Vlok
They are from your perspective and so that’s what’s important.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. Okay. But to get back to the point. You would like to see an academic overview of the interpretations of particular sources.
Marli Vlok
Yeah. Because I think they’re really handy. When we moved to Ottawa, I met a new fencer, she was brand new. She took some Fiore classes, she loved it. She loved the dagger. And she just went and cold bought a book and it happened to be your book. She loved it, because it was laid out in a manner that she could understand, as someone who doesn’t have a lot of background, and just watching her enthusiasm. I was like, oh, it would be so nice if you could reach more people like that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, the books do. They’re great for that.
Marli Vlok
Yes, exactly. So I would just like to see more of that.
Guy Windsor
Any particular gaps, other than Neapolitan fencing, any particular gaps? Fiore is pretty well covered. The German stuff. People can’t stop writing books about the German stuff. I mean, Dierk Hagedorn has got like six of them out already. And they are seriously, properly academic.
Marli Vlok
So apparently, and I’m going to call on Michael Heveran here. He has been asking Reinier to translate Scheffer, it’s one of the German, I think he’s German… Perhaps Fabris’ descendent? I don’t know. Not my corner of the game. I think Reinier has done a really good job of bringing out a lot of these Fabris adjacent German rapier texts, which some of them fit in really well and some don’t. But Michael’s probably a good example of someone who’s been complaining about not having an English version of that book for a long time. I’ve been on Devon’s case about doing, was it Pagano? I think, just because it sounded moderately entertaining.
Guy Windsor
Sounds kind of cool.
Marli Vlok
But yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of bad translations out there that I’d like decent ones of.
Guy Windsor
Sure, but the thing is, finding new sources to translate is one thing, but I thought we were talking about was taking a source that has already been interpreted a lot and then doing a comparative study on those interpretations.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, I mean, I think Marcelli, Neapolitans, are probably the lowest hanging fruit there, right?
Guy Windsor
Well, no, because no one’s done a comparative study of interpretations of Fiore or of Capoforro or of Vadi or of any of the really popular ones. I mean, no one is taking the existing interpretations of people like me, and putting them side by side. And going, well, Guy does this here. But Shaun does this there, and Greg does this there. No one is doing that. And I wouldn’t do that because my goals are different. Because at the end of the day, I don’t fundamentally care what modern people think about how medieval swordfighting went. It’s an interesting thing. And it’s very useful to have colleagues who are doing work on the same subjects I’m doing work on. That’s really useful, and so I’m interested in that that perspective, right, but I don’t study other people’s interpretations. I study sources and come up with my own.
Marli Vlok
But do you think that if we were to do this comparison that they would really be that different? I mean, like your Capoferro example, I think is a good example of a very small.
Guy Windsor
Exactly. It’s tiny. So my students doing Capoferro and Devon’s students doing Capoferro could fence each other. And they would both think, oh, it’s Capoferro. Here’s another way to put it. The differences between our schools, if you like, is less significant than the differences between individual fencers. So there’s more variability within one school than there is between the schools. With tall people and short people and, you know.
Marli Vlok
Feisty people and dramatic people.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, temperaments and exactly sort of thing.
Marli Vlok
I mean, I will admit that I am curious about how different people interpret different things.
Guy Windsor
It is an interesting subject, it’s also difficult to pin down. Most people doing this don’t publish comprehensive interpretations of their work. They don’t, because it’s a fuck ton of work. And it doesn’t make very much money.
Marli Vlok
Do it for the love, right?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Okay, but you still have to feed your kids. And my training guides, like this is how you should do it. Like The Medieval Longsword, or The Medieval Dagger book that your friend very kindly bought. And do give her my love and say, if she has any questions, feel free.
Marli Vlok
Oh, you might regret that.
Guy Windsor
No, I will not regret that. I never regret honest questions from keen students. But that isn’t academic at all. It’s like, this is what you should do with very little actual reference to the text itself. And I have other stuff which is a lot more academic, like my Vadi book, which is a translation and interpretation of Vadi. And I have a book on Fiore’s longsword. It’s From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice, the Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi, which is literally image, transcription, translation interpretation, and link to a video clip. It’s totally thorough. And if you want to know what I think about how any given Fiore play should be done, you can pick up the book, go to that play, and go, okay, this is how he’s transcribing it. This is how he’s translating it, this is what he thinks it means. And this is how he does it. But for your comparative thing, all of my colleagues, or some of my colleagues need to do that right for their interpretations so that we actually have the things we can compare.
Marli Vlok
So perhaps that is a better description of what I would like. More people putting pen to paper, or, you know, actually, I could backtrack, I haven’t spend the money yet, right. The cheque hasn’t cleared.
Guy Windsor
It comes in a big box full of gold coins, because we’re historians.
Marli Vlok
Better not chip the coins because I hear they can devalue that way. Perhaps I would be more content with more thorough books being released. Not necessarily comparative. Although I still think that’d be interesting. But that’s just me. I don’t think you’d make as much money out of comparative.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, they don’t make nearly as much money. I mean, The Medieval Longsword has outsold the From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice by at least 10 to one, which is fine. I don’t care because, as long as at least a couple of my books are making enough money that I can get on and write the one I want to write. And I don’t actually care with which book sells as long as enough of them sell overall. That’s fine. I’ve written books, at least, like my Vadi book, I think has sold like less than 500 copies. I don’t care. It was worth doing. I’ve enjoyed doing it.
Marli Vlok
We have one, so there you go.
Guy Windsor
Hey, oh, that’s great.
Marli Vlok
I think Adrian worked out of it during COVID and some of the online longsword classes. But yeah, like I think it would be really helpful to have similar to you know, your Fiore book, have text, have the translation, have an interpretation.
Guy Windsor
And the link to a video clip?
Marli Vlok
Oh, gold, right unless you don’t have internet access. But I won’t be living in a place that doesn’t have internet access when I’m retired.
Guy Windsor
You can always just like go and download them. So you can take them to places with no internet, you can download them before you go.
Marli Vlok
But yeah, I think that’s really that’s really helpful. I’ve always been a pro textbook person. I think videos are great. But I don’t like them as my single source.
Guy Windsor
Because they don’t say why. They say how and what, but they don’t say why. They can’t really say why.
Marli Vlok
Also, I’m a suspicious person in general, like, everything is slightly suspicious. And so if you’re going to give me a video, now I have to go and find the book and I have to go and see if what you did is actually true? Or are you just making some BS that you’re expecting me to, you know, have for dinner? And so having all the information there, it’s transparent, I’m far more likely to have faith in you. I hope it is not misplaced faith, but I’m far more likely to have that faith. And I think I would get further with it.
Guy Windsor
And you can check the work if it’s transparent. That’s the thing. So even if your faith is misplaced, you don’t actually need faith because you can check. Trust but verify.
Marli Vlok
But it’s not like you have to put in the work. You can be lazy and just trust the video. So I’ve altered my money spending from your financial advice.
Guy Windsor
So you’ve put it into financing these interpretation publications, which maybe in a second round of financing, you can get someone to compare those publications.
Marli Vlok
Series B financing?
Guy Windsor
Yes. Excellent.
Marli Vlok
Yeah, you know, we keep the sports side happy. We’ll give them some rules. And they can all play nice. And yeah, but I would like to see more books. I like books. Bookshelves are happy places and happy things to have in the house.
Guy Windsor
I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Marli, it’s been lovely to meet you.
Marli Vlok
Thanks for having me.
