After some five years I could find no diminution in the symptoms of my obsessive condition. But my job on the newspaper gave me some diversion. From my vantage point in the midst of a large information-gathering machine, in frequent touch with foreign correspondents, I had good seats for the greatest show on earth. The plot at this stage concerned the aftermath of the mighty convulsions that Mikhail Gorbachev had unleashed in the Soviet Union. I saw the ice of the Cold War political landscape shift and crack. I tried to understand why Yugoslavia had exploded and why South Africa hadn’t. But, throughout, the question that haunted me was not some great issue such as, Would Russia ever be a fully functioning free democracy? but rather, Would I ever be able to throw anyone with tai otoshi? The answer to both these questions was the same: “Possibly, but not in the foreseeable future.”

At the beginning I was relieved to discover that the practice of judo did not entail any study of Eastern philosophy. It was just another sport, although I became aware from my more cerebral brethren at the club that Zen and Confucianism did inform the Japanese approach to judo. I could never really get on with the sort of Zen Buddhist budo-babble that says things like, “When you seek it, you cannot find it. When you no longer seek it, it is always with you.” I can see that may be true of the car keys, but how does it help me to do ouchi-gari? And there was “Your opponent is not as weak as you think. Your opponent is not as strong as you think.” Which means so much. Which means nothing at all.

Perhaps it is because I was reluctant to absorb these sorts of ideas that I could never make any really significant progress. The “mental tranquility” that was meant to sharpen my concentration somehow eluded me, though I was deriving a huge amount of pleasure from randori. I was presumably getting high on endorphins as well as judo. Even if a training session went badly, I always came away from the dojo feeling as though I had just consumed three-quarters of a bottle of extremely good champagne.

Apart from the judo itself, I enjoyed the crazy mixture of people from more than two dozen countries with a variety of jobs and backgrounds. Although some of them could hardly speak English, everyone could speak judo—which was all that mattered. Meanwhile I was discovering that, as with any other language, the better one spoke it, the more interesting were the conversations one could have. And all the time, I measured my progress in this language against that of my peers, who came and went as fitness, injury, and family and work commitments decreed.

I also had the splendid privilege of training alongside judo players who were among the best in the country, the best in the world. Here I could see the champions in action up close—closer than any of the spectators at a tournament. I could hear what they could never hear: the soft hoarse whisper of tatami brushed by skillful feet. Not only that, I was able to practice with the great contestants myself and find out exactly what it was like to be on the receiving end of their craft. I have already explained the course such encounters would inevitably follow, but my “autograph book” was forever filling with the signatures of the great.

Regardless of the odds I faced in randori, I always believed I might just prevail. This self-delusion has been a crucial element in sustaining me through the whole enterprise as I sought to defy gravity in all its forms—age, fitness, health, and the pull of the earth that would so often drop me on the floor. Self-delusion has stood by me like a loyal friend. Perhaps not entirely loyal. I noticed that whenever I went to one of those dreaded gradings it would cut and run. Then I would be left alone with an awareness of the grim reality of my inadequacy. To be honest, our friendship has been wearing a little thin with the passage of time.

Seven times thrown, eight times rise. If only it was just the seven. Given the level of judo at the club, I was more thrown than throwing. It didn’t matter to me. I’d occasionally throw someone; the smallest success would keep me going for days. I found it quite tiring being chucked on the floor. To be thrown is like doing a bungee jump with a rope that is a little too long. There are many different ways of landing. Sometimes the mat comes rushing up to greet you and slap you on the shoulder like an old friend; sometimes, when things go wrong, it’ll just punch you in the face.

I trained quite hard outside the dojo to get fit for what I had to face inside it, but I still found randori fantastically grueling. At times my whole system was on the verge of a work strike. The lungs would put down their tools, the legs and arms were ready to come out in support, and, up on the management floor, pride and will couldn’t do a thing about it. Sometimes, in my oxygen-deprived state, I became light-headed, overcome with a cocktail of emotions—three parts frustration at my technical shortcomings, two parts anger that I did not try this thing when I was younger, and a large dash of self-pity for my physical decline.

One Sunday morning I was training at the Judokan in Hammersmith when a familiar figure caught my attention at the other end of the mat. He was in a terrible state; with his sweat-soaked gi,he looked as though he had just been dragged half-drowning from the sea. His face was frighteningly gaunt and he appeared to be in the final stages of exhaustion. As I saw the look of desperation in his eyes, I wondered what was driving the poor fellow. I also began to question the wisdom of having a mirror in a dojo.

Even in the depths of fatigue, my attendance at training sessions was never an act of will. I found that this ridiculous pastime had got its talons into me and was dragging me along regardless of my need to rest. I was puzzled by friends who would ask, “Are you still doing the old . . . ?” and applaud me for my persistence. Does one admire the alcoholic for his unflagging attendance at the bar? Does one congratulate the crack addict on his habit—“Well done, it’s just amazing the way you’ve stuck with it”?

But as time went by, my once dark-brown belt was growing paler and more frayed. I wanted another color, the only color that mattered to me. I wanted to get my dan grade and be a black belt. Apart from the obvious reason that I rated it as some sort of an achievement, I wanted it because there was something comically incongruous in the notion of my getting it that appealed to me. It would be a good joke to play on judo, which had played so many jokes on me. There was something else. Although the enterprise was essentially an act of supreme selfishness, I felt heavily indebted to a number of people who had put an awful lot of personal effort into teaching and encouraging me. When one of them might ask with studied casualness, “Are you going along to the grading this Sunday?” I sensed their expectations.