Late

I was late to training and arrived to find the dojo packed, the ranks swelled by the presence of the visiting Australian students and university kids home for the summer holidays. After a quick warm up I squeezed into a small bit of space on the left-hand side of the hall, with the sunken dojo entrance behind me. Once down the hall doing upwards blocks. Then rather than turn around we performed the same block going backwards. I failed to take into account the presence of the 30 centimetre drop-off behind me. On my third move backwards my left foot landed on air rather than floorboard, hit a garbage bin and sent it crashing into a mother who was sitting in the entrance and my left hand grasped at the wall to stop me falling, landed on the light-switch and turned the dojo lights out. Everyone turned to see what had happened. I grinned like a fool, adjusted my stance and kept going. Behind me the mother began cleaning up the spilt garbage.