Handbags at dawn

The Meerkat was involved in an embarrasingly immature tête - à - tête at BJJ class the other day. I was sparring with another novice and locked him up in a nice spider type guard. He got frustrated at this and starting dropping his knee into my ribs. The first time he did this I thought it was maybe an accident and gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he saw the gap and proceeded to do this a total of four times! Now forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious but the rules are quite clear on this...NO STRIKES ALLOWED IN BJJ.
I was so infuriated at his bullying tactics that I screamed abuse and four letter words quite unbecoming of a gentleman. He simply laughed when he saw how much I had lost my rag and even blamed me for not telling him first time. By now I was infuriated and swept him to the ground and rolled him around quite forcefully looking for a killer armlock to teach him a lesson. Luckily he tucked up pretty good. Sitting on a semi-mount position I was still mad but the next thing I knew, he turned his body around to face me and elbowed me in the face. He claimed it was an accident - yeah right - but I was by now a crazy ball of fury so I elbowed him back in the face. I knew that was wrong the moment it happened but I just completely saw red.
I stopped afterwards and took a moment to myself to calm down. He was still smirking with a 'you didn't even touch me' look and when I explained that what he did was bang out of order, he simply shrugged his shoulders and pleaded ignorance of the rules - come on, you don't start BJJ and not know that strikes are disallowed???
Anyway, after I calmed myself down, I apologised for losing my temper and he said he wouldn't do it again, but that it was hard for him to ignore his years of martial arts training (doesn't seem to be a problem for me). Hmmm, I'll wait and see. Luckily for both of us, our little incident was in the far corner of the mat as I don't think Eddie would take too kindly to our moment of disharmony.

The year of the Rooster, which is my birth sign, has certainly started off with a bang. It seems I've been acting recently more like a young fighting cockeral than the ropey old broiler chicken I normally am. There's too much testosterone in the all male grappling club. A cold shower and some soothing TLC from the Mrs I reckon will calm me down.

On Monday - a date with the mighty Royce Gracie - one seminar I cannot wait for.