Dean and Paula in Blighty, autumn 2025
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering
Our beloved Palace - FA Cup winners 2025
The Gathering
Baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Leaders preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen
Soup Kitchen Xmas lunch
Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng
Thankful Thursdays.JPG)
HOPE Home Based Care Team
Gathering Ground
TGI Our umbrella NPO and PBO for our outreach
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
At Knockout Centre (owned and run by Corné Blom a former MMA fighter) it's used to denote an open session on Saturday mornings, in which boxers can come and do their own workouts as well as spar with other willing members.
For me it's a new idea and one I really like and enjoy, especially the sparring aspect of it (that'll be my S post).
The purpose of the neutral corners is to provide a space that a boxer can be sent to by the referee, for example whilst counting down a felled opponent.
In my previous white collar fights I've been known as Pastor Punch as I dispense the five-fold ministry to my opponent.
I always found this quite an amusing play on Ephesians 4:11 "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers" and the idea of 'give me 5', or rather giving my opponent five.
However, in view of my age and health issues, not least of which is a collapsed disc in my spine, if I do ever fight again I will be renaming myself as Dino The Lumbering Dinosaur.
Until recently we were part of the CEY family, but they needed the space for their growing Crossfit classes and the boxing side of things needed space to grow too, so it felt natural to separate the two out.
The biggest joy of now being in our own venue is that the boxing ring is back! At CEY the ring had to be sacrificed due to space demands so it's great to have it back.
Knockout Centre is the only gym in the Helderberg area with a proper boxing ring which speaks volumes about the quality of the place!
So this is H For Health - An Update...
Last year ended poorly from a health & fitness perspective. I already knew and accepted that between going on holiday in late September and hopefully flying to the UK for Christmas in late December I would be battling to keep the weight off, after all, what are holidays for if not a bit of indulgence...
Initially we only had the small punchbag, but a bit later we were able to get hold of a proper 50kg heavy punchbag and that made a world of difference to our home boxing sessions.
Friday night is fight night - this used to be an exciting refrain to hear as a kid, and even now I find it quite exciting, though one rarely hears it.
At the tender age of just 54 I had my first real life experience of Fight Night as my boxing gym hosted an evening of White Collar (my W post) boxing.
My fight was with Conrad who became a good buddy and went on to be a great help to my son as he went to college to study sound engineering.
Anyway, back to fight night...
We had a great fight and though we were the lowest billed fight on the card that night, we were voted *Fight Of The Night* because we went heavy ad hard and really battered each other. It was a LOT of fun!
It has been said that boxing is the art of hitting without being hit. I can't find any attribution for this, but there is an element of truth about it.
It's easy to think of boxing as pure pugilism in which two opponents merely slug it out, hitting each other as hard as they can until one is knocked out. However, boxing is about the defense just as much as it is about the offense.
The first record (or physical depiction) of boxing comes from around 3000BC in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Since then there have been other notable ancient depictions of boxing and in 1650BC we have the first depiction of Boxing in front of spectators, dating back to Thebes in ancient Egypt.
The first illustration of boxers with gloves was seen on a fresco from the Minoan civilization dating back to the Bronze Age in Crete c1650BC.
The modern day sport of boxing as we would recognise it has some seriously dodgy roots and was pretty much outlawed within what we would know as *civilized society* through most of the 19th Century. In America, boxing's roots are directly traceable to the illicit world of gambling and casinos.
As I said in my Theme Reveal post, I'll be looking at my A To Z of Boxing.
This isn't a definitive A to Z of boxing, rather it's an A to Z of my journey in boxing and my love of the sport, which was instilled by my Dad, himself a keen amateur boxer in his day, but more of him later in the month...
There are a number of factors that have limited my time on my unicycles lately (laziness, the wind and a few other excuses...), so I decided it was time to stop making those excuses and just get back on with riding again.
So for the last couple of weeks I've been trying to crack off a couple of 10k rides on my Kris Holm 26er and generally I have managed it.
The joy of riding regularly is that I can feel my core getting a good workout which means that my back is less likely to cause me any grief, added to that the health benefits of regular exercise (as if Boxing 4 times a week wasn't enough!) and it's a win win.
In my first Challenge (and last year's) I couldn't think of a theme so decided to keep things random, but this year, as in 2013 I have a theme. Hooray!
It was great to be able to spar at Boxing again this morning. It's been a long time since we've been able to do this, so it was good to be at it again.
It might seem like an odd thing to be doing and enjoying (especially at my age), but there is something very satisfying, I guess almost cathartic, in stepping in to the ring to hit (and be hit) by someone else, but it really is a lot of fun, especially knowing that you both chose to be there and are keeping things under control.
I've wanted to try Uni-Hockey for a long time so it was cool to finally get a game yesterday with some fellow unicyclists in the Cape Town area.
It was fast, hectic, just a little chaotic and I was rubbish at the hockey part of it, but it was great fun and I really want to do it again!
Massive thanks to Donna at Oddwheel for organizing these monthly unicycling events.
I'm really enjoying my unicycling and loving going for longer rides over 10ks, especially since I've had to stop running due to my back.
Yesterday morning's ride was just over 16ks and I got to enjoy seeing the sunrise reflecting on Table Mountain which is always a treat. It's nice to be riding so early too because it means there are few people out and about so I don't have to dodge so many pedestrians.
Ever since the beginning of lockdown well over a year ago, and then particularly when I herniated a disc in my spine, I've been battling to get back down to my pre-lockdown weight.
During the lockdown I hit a high of 95kgs (15 stone), but I know this was a result of depression connected directly to my back and the fact that I couldn't run or box. It was a deeply frustrating time and one I have no wish to repeat.
In early January 2019 I made a life changing decision to get fit and healthy and had no idea just how timely and beneficial that decision would turn out to be. In fact, without meaning to be melodramatic, I'd go so far as to say that decision saved my life.
I had stopped all forms of exercise several years earlier, I used to cycle a lot and do a few other bits, but for a number of lame excuses gave it all up and became a couch potato piling on the weight. Because I'm quite tall I appeared to carry the weight well and no one ever said anything about my expanding beer gut.
Tomorrow evening I have my second white collar boxing match in a rematch with my good friend Conrad.
Last time out we were the first fight on the bill, I don't think anyone took the two old guys too seriously, however we were declared the 'fight of the night' and so this time we're the last fight before the headline fight which is a charity match.
Just over two years ago when I decided to take up boxing I would never have thought I would actually step in a ring, but I have to say that it is a lot of fun and the sparring before hand leading up to it is brilliant.
I also can't think of a better way to get fit.
