Fed up of clickbait and throwaway web content more about hits than user joy? Come get deep with Oli…
PART ONE: NOTES ON GETTING THERE
It took a while this trip. Eight or so years of waiting. Eight long years of watching the charts and missing season after season as storms moved through without everything getting ‘just so’.
You see to get where we are right now, we being Oli Adams, filmer Danya and I, takes a lot of effort and a shedload of luck.
It all started, as these things tend to, with a late night call from Oli. Something along the lines of:
‘What are you doing from tomorrow for a week or so?’
The answer tends to be:
‘Depends, why?’
Then we get down to the nitty gritty. A trip so out there that no magazine had done it before. Real wild west. But with waves. Great potential for watery tunnels of joy and the best thing is there’s no one there. Well. No. That’s a lie. There is ONE person there. One surfer with a whole island to his own self. Sounds like fantasy but every word of this account is true … honest guv.
Somehow we fit ten boards and two photographer types gear in Oli’s car and motorway miles are duly chewed up. A brief four hours sleep on a friends floor from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. then up and at it again. A ferry is endured. Suffice to say spring swell and ferries do not mix. On that point seasickness bags on ferries are daft. Are they made for children? I’d top one of those things off in one foul hurl. Which would then leave you in a tricky position trying to open a fresh bag for vom two without spilling the gory contents of the first. Anyhoose. I digress. The ferry berths. We take our nauseous selves off for another drive. Another night’s sleep. All so we can get on another ferry. This ferry is key to the tale. This ferry only goes once a week. If the weather isn’t too minging. Which considering the winter we’ve just endured is a long shot. The locals warn us kindly, with a 50/50 mix of humour and concern for us, that the ferry, if it makes it tomorrow, will be the second one to make it in six weeks. Once there we could be stranded for the long run.
PART TWO: ALL AT SEA
The morning is bright and clear. Not a cloud in the sky. It’s the first day of spring and Mama Nature has her Sunday best on for us. Even though we’re far from the Equator there’s a definite hint of warm in the air. So much so I’ve not even bothered with the waterproof over-layers for once. We have to do a shopping spree before getting on the boat because, and I shit thee not, there is not a shop where we are going. No shop. No pub. No nothing. Whatever you need you have to bring with you. Which is on one hand terrifying but on the other refreshing. An unfortunate side effect: it does make you panic buy Curly Wurlys.
The boat departed under a vault of blue sky on the calmest sea imaginable. It would be a few more hours on the brine before we found out if we could get off the other end.
You see this ferryboat, if one can call it that, is all well and good at the civilised departure point with it’s regulation harbour where you can just drive on. Standard. At the other end if there’s too much wind or swell getting off is a tad tricky. As pedestrians you just have to time your jump from the boat to the quay so you don’t get crushed or fall in. As a car you endure the indignity of being hoisted into the blue by a crane…
Yes.
A crane.
It’s a surreal site to see cars and supplies whipped merrily off a ferry by crane anywhere, let alone in the British Isles. Once in the air your car is controlled by the high tech guidance system of: men hanging on to ropes. All fun and games for us. Not so much for Oli with his pride and joy Audi dangling above the North Atlantic; whim to every gust of wind. It all went swimmingly, not literally, and we were off.
Twenty seconds and approximately twenty metres later we were shaking hands with Mr Solo: the sole surfer. The man who lives and surf here by himself. He was glad to see us. Understandable as surfing shallow, heavy waves on your lonesome in an area renowned for strong currents isn’t exactly a cake walk. Not to mention the car size seals and flotillas of killer whales.
He’d sorted us somewhere to stay, a rad crofting cottage that, admittedly, hadn’t been touched inside since it was done up in the early seventies. It was dry(ish), warm (as long as we had the wood burner on) and just over the sheep proof dry stone wall out front had a sea view. He apologised for the lean to/shed part of the property that had been pulverised into firewood by a storm. Like everyone in the UK they’d copped a pasting from the fiercest winter we’d ever witnessed. On the bright side it did mean we didn’t have to look very far for firewood. Just as well as there wasn’t a single tree on the island.
A quick dump of the bags, shopping and many excess boards and we were off to check the surf. That took a drive of about a minute. From one side of the island, where our gaff was, to the other. The surf, like the island, was small, but the potential was blatantly obvious. We’d timed it right. Got in on the weekly ferry on a day it could actually sail and bigger swell was imminent. Now we just had to wait for it turn up.
PART THREE: NOTES ON OUR SITUATION
One quick surf of four waves with a massive bull seal late that first evening and two days of nothing later it’s morning. It’s blowing a hoolie outside. Totally flat on the reef rich side of the island and onshore gunge on the other. So it’s a lazy, long breakfast. I’ve just lit the wood burner and I’m typing this as we huddle around it’s warmth. A strong sweet coffee warming our insides. We haven’t got drinkable water on tap or any hot water apart from the kettle. So in the croft the wood burner is our world. If it’s not too windy it stays reasonably warm. When it’s blowing a hoolie the drafts whip through making warmth fleeting. Wearing coats and/or sleeping bags inside is the norm. Flannel washes are how we keep clean. There is a bath but using a kettle for a bath is daft.
We’re not exactly in the Arctic here but after only a few days the admiration for the people that eke out an existence here, farmers one and all, so far from civilisation, is great. The planning, the resolve, the toughness needed when there’s one boat a week, if they’re lucky, and one cargo plane a week boggles my mind. In the easy everything culture we’re used to the absence of stuff and the constant advertising of stuff is a real tonic. The basics come to the fore: shelter, food, heat and water. We’re okay for the first three and the latter involves driving up to our friends place with drinkable tap water to fill up the bottles. So all we can do now is wait. I can’t even check the charts. Or get a text message for that matter. My network doesn’t reach this far out. The one little guest house near the breakwater that doubles as a pier has got wifi but it seems more like dial-up and they’re only open for lunch, of whatever they have on the go, mainly mutton stew, from 12 – 1. So it’s take it as it is. Drive or walk across to the other side of the island and see what’s going on. We’ve not scored yet but we’re hopeful. In the meantime a good book is the order for today. I’ll leave you with the thought about how living up here must’ve been pre-Internet. Cut off from the outside world apart from the humble phone. Newspapers a treat. A little satellite island that we know nothing about that could almost be in space it’s so far out.
PART FOUR: NOTES ON THE SURF
Mr Solo the sole surfer has been living here on and off for eight years and one of the things he mentioned about the various reefs was:
‘If you’re looking at it and it’s good … you’ve missed it.’
Now that doesn’t make much sense initially but the gist is simple: it’s fickle, changeable and hellishly exposed up here. What looks good will be probably be a dry slab by the time you’ve suited and booted. Case in point was today. This morning when I wrote the last part it was flat. We went for a lunchtime check and before we’d even parked we could see the offshore reefs feathering huge plumes. The swell had kicked in hard. A right we’d seen the first night looked likely. Draining little pits on a knobbly, shallow, right reef. Oli gave it a shot. As is typical in these situations the head high fun ended when a six foot widow maker set came steam rolling through changing the ball game entirely. But for a first hollow session it was all the taste we needed. Now if we can just repeat that with some light and the offshore wind blowing a few notches down from the speed of sound that it’s currently whistling through the walls at that would be awesome.
PART FIVE: A GOOD DAY
Seems like the gods of weather and waves smiled on those brave or stupid enough to risk getting stuck out here. As light winds and sunshine actually happened. For a few hours at least. Of course the golden sky orb graced us with its presence when the tide was too low. Then the rain came in after Oli surfed two waves at the start of his session. But, the main slab he’d come here to score got its first test. It’s mean, unruly and hard to read but it’s definitely an interesting chunk of rock that the ocean gurgles over. This slab is four minutes walk from our nest. On the west coast. We had a beachy session on the east coast two minutes walk from the gaff in the evening. Who needs cars when you’re living on a small island?
The weather here is phenomenal. I’m not sure if it’s because the island is so small and low but the sky seems huge, like it does in East Anglia, the main effect of this is you can see the weather coming miles off. Fronts fly through on an near hourly basis. It’s when the wind swings you notice it most. As we were checking the beach the wind was light south east, a big chunk of blue sky was about to reach the bit of sky where the sun was hiding. Oli got suited and booted for some fun beachy ramps in potentially awesome evening light. The second he hit the water the clouds stopped, the wind swung and a even darker grey clouds blew in on a west wind. There was a silver lining though, for the last half hour of the day the sun peeked out from under the blanket of cloud giving us a riotous half hour of light that dazzled the senses. Golden light streaming under purple clouds as the jade green waves got progressively cleaner. The sole surfer, unfortunately nursing a bad back from sheep rustling duties, couldn’t resist and joined Oli for a few fun ones. It was the kind of session that leaves everyone with a smile so big it could power a town.
PART SIX: THE REALITY OF LIFE ON THE EDGE
So. We were supposed to be getting the weekly ferry back to the main island today. You can sense from the ‘supposed’ that this hasn’t happened. It’s understandable. The sea is a foamy mess of spume and it’s so onshore at the jetty end of the island there are onshore rooster tails of spray blowing off the little swell. The pack of seals playing in the waves near the jetty don’t seem to mind. Elsewhere it’s huge and scary. It’s so windy the sea is a maelstrom of whitewater. Getting out of the car is not advised unless you want to get blown on your arse. For us soft southerners this wild weather is exceptional. For the hardy locals that call this tiny island home it’s standard. So all we can do now is wait. Waiting for the ferry to make a call. We already know it’s cancelled tomorrow as well. So maybe the next day. But anyone that can read a weather map knows that the day after that is our first hope. We are lucky in one way: there are sheep that need to be taken off island for slaughter so the boat is trying to get here. Without the sheep they’d just wait until next weekend leaving us here for another week.
It’s pretty random to be the only tourists somewhere. We are the lone interlopers. We’re also running out of food as we budgeted for a week or so. But we’ll be fine. The island community is sparse but strong. No one locks their doors or cars. Hell our gaff hasn’t even got locks on the doors to lock. As the sole surfer told us: if you need something just ask. He dropped off a food parcel of treats for us just now knowing we’re a little rattled about being stranded. Even though we knew full well it was a possibility when we came.
PART SEVEN: DOWN TIME ABBEY
It’s 9:30 a.m. I’ve been awake since 6:30. Woken by the wind, rain and hail trying to beat its way through my bedroom window. Whilst the windows in this croft are draughty the walls and roof are anything but. Built tough up here. The walls are two foot thick and the roof … the roof is something to be seen. None of your soft southern roof tiles here. The roof is made of slabs of rock. Not slate. Not tile. Slabs. As in five foot long chunks of bedrock. And thick too. The very end of our croft is still in its original cow shed state with hay feed racks and stone dividers for the cows. The roof isn’t lined in there so you can see the build. Th rafters are random, all sorts of wood, whatever was available in centuries past I guess, and the thickest roof slab is six inches thick. Yep. Six. So. Weather do your worst. You ain’t getting through six inches of rock armour.
There’s not a great deal to do here when it’s blowing a hoolie outside and everyone else is hibernating. So apart from building myself a roaring fire I’m just chilling. Sat on the hearth reading whilst drinking tea. Which might sound like the most boring Saturday morning on Earth but I’m smiling. I’m sleeping so well here, storm aside, and the simplicity of our existence is a real tonic for the soul. Sure this is a work trip. I’m shooting. Oli is surfing, when possible, and Danya is running around filming everything but for once this actually feels a bit like a holiday. I’m gonna come back refreshed rather than the more normal exhausted. Surfing is a break from the norm. You’re at peace in the sea. The pursuit of waves up here just extends that whole vibe.
PART EIGHT: ABANDONED ENDINGS
And so it came to pass the ferry did indeed abandon us. It didn’t work out all that bad as one of the days after we were originally supposed to leave was pumping. But after a few days of ‘maybes’ from the ferry they gave up on making the call and scheduled the next one for the following weekend. So we were staring down the barrel of an extra week when we were already a few days over. For Danya and I, with offices and colleges to be at we had to bail. For Oli it was the impossible choice. Sit it out by himself crossing his fingers the ferry wasn’t called off for yet another week or flying out with us to then return to rescue his car. He stayed. After all there were a few good days looming in the week. As I type this he’s still up there a week after we left. It’s still a ‘maybe’ from the ferry. He’s rattling around the spooky old farmhouse with the island spirits all on his lonesome. Hopefully he’s figured out how to get the wood burner roaring by now. He promised us a Rocky IV style montage week of surfing, training and yoga. He was gonna use sheep for weights and just maybe try and walk around the island in a day.
As for us media scum, we escaped, via the ‘airport’ that is a field with a shed. The islanders take turns in being fire cover for the plane. All that mattered was the flight was ours. On a plane that comfortably wins the ‘smallest plane I’ve even been on’ award. A mere seven passenger seats, a rattly bunch of bolts it was, held together with chewing gum and hope. As equally thrilling as it was terrifying. Cunningly it does not accept surfboard bags. Or any bag over 15kgs. So we left with one bag each. Camera and laptop essentials only. My big lens, my swim fins, wetsuit and bag of stinking laundry are all still there. Waiting for Oli Adams Freight Inc to deliver them at an indeterminate point in the future.
A key plot point there: if you want to explore out here you have to play the ferry game. You can’t guarantee your return, hell you can’t even guarantee getting out there either.
We escaped anyhoose. Leaving Oli to be haunted by barking seals and flocks of Canada geese. Our mission was a long one. I’ve not known the like. Something along the lines of: plane > bus > bus > ferry > taxi > train > bus > plane > car > car > home.
A nerve frazzling experience but so worth it. I’d go back in a heartbeat. There’s something special about the place. A unique corner of the British Isles that few have seen or will ever see.
A place where everyone is friendly, people talk to anyone and everyone because that’s what you do out there. A place where family, food and flock are important. A place that holds many surfing secrets yet to be uncovered. We only saw a glimmer of what the island can do. The potential is vast. I for one can’t wait to go back… Perhaps with a jet ski in tow for the mysto outer reefs. Consider my mind blown, my smile big and my soul glowing.
Words & Photos Sharpy Huge thanks to: Mr Solo and family for the cottage, coal, wood, food, bog rolls, fresh water, company, history lessons and laughs. It would’ve been a totally different experience without you. And Patrick for being a total legend as always.
Welcome to Carve magazine. Our printed and interwebbed journal documenting the trinity of: human, board and wave. Three things that when combined equate to the funnest thing you can do in the sea.
The mag is in its twenty first year of publication and has been surfer owned and run since day one. Our ethos has always been: surfing is fun.
Whether this summer is your first stab at learning the dark art of standing up, and the whitewater is your nemesis, or whether you’ve got stickers on the beak of your board and can do air reverses it’s all about fun. If it’s not then you might need to go and have a quiet word with yourself.
It’s now summer. The surf will inevitably be busy. We’re all chasing that same rush, the same thrill as your paddle strokes fade and you pop to your feet and the peculiar physics of you standing on a lump of foam and fibreglass on a moving wall of water takes hold and you accelerate.
So if you’re an able surfer and can surf out back be considerate of those who are still on the upward curve of the surfing arc on the inside. Or those who accidentally make it out back. Everyone started somewhere and learning the etiquette of where and how to paddle out and priority is something all surf schools should drill into their students. A friendly word is always better than shouting and being a dick. Hell, you might make a friend. If you want to be aggressive, shout at people and be a twat maybe go to a football match instead.
British surfing is like the British demeanour: polite, restrained and civilised. There’s no need for aggro in the water. So surf careful, cheerful and considerate and if you really want crowd free surfs then the obvious call is to get up for the dawny or hit the late surfs. Avoid surf school rush hour. Or just hit up the spots where there aren’t any schools.
Conversely if you are learning this summer then watch and learn. There’s more to learning to surf than just popping up … So much more. Always be aware of where you and your board are, and keep hold of it, and watch how the good guys are doing it when you’re not trying to catch a wave. You’ll be out there one day. Paddling into green waves is such a joy and so much easier than bouncy whitewater take offs on a battered foamy. But it’s a rite of passage you need to go through. No point being out back until you can paddle and stand up with confidence.
The water is warm, wetsuits are thin, burnt meat cooked outside is a welcome dietary fixture and you can drink booze in beer gardens without freezing to death. It’s summer. Enjoy it. Get out there and have some fun and most importantly: be nice.
Don’t worry it happens.
You will fall out of love with everything at some point.
Thankfully falling out of love with surfing isn’t as traumatic as it is to fall out of love with your partner, job, town or friends.
This is something that can be recovered.
Surfing doesn’t nag you, or give you impossible deadlines, it’s not out your window reminding you of what once you dug you now don’t, it doesn’t ignore you and find its phone more interesting when you’ve made precious time to hang together.
The reasons can be many and varied. Not enough time. Life getting in the way. The pressures of work, family and friends. Long spells of shonky conditions can do it. Then there’s geography. Being an inlander is a huge commitment, not just financially, to commit to being a surfer when you don’t live near the coast is one of the bravest things you can do.
It’s like a long distant relationship. Except all the effort is one way traffic. The ocean doesn’t return your calls or like your social updates. It just sits there brooding. That’s what the Atlantic likes to do. That’s how it rolls. It’s fine with you loving it and it’s wave based favours. But it couldn’t give an arse in return. There will never be a damp, ‘You okay hon?’
Even if you live near the ocean and have the time to get in frequently it can still happen. It’s too crowded. Your boards are just not working out. The banks are poop. You’ve hit a performance plateau that you can’t traipse out of…
Whatever the reason you find yourself not looking at the charts and forecasts every day. You start agreeing to plans at the weekends without the characteristic ‘Errrm, I’ll let you know’ that the truly in love always drop so they can ensure it really will be surf free at the weekend before committing. You find yourself not checking the waves for a few days. It becomes weeks. Then before you know it you’ve not been in the sea for months and the paddling muscles are done for.
Next time your idly thumbing through some mind rot on your phone and wasting vital minutes on this good earth maybe think about that. You could be in the ocean. You could be dancing with Mama Nature. Caressing the damp curves of the Atlantic in the frankly mind baffling act of standing on a wave. You could be keeping fit in body and mind in the best way possible. Exercise without mindless repetition. Precious time away from those infernal screens that dog our existence. Mainlining nature. All while doing the funnest thing you can do by yourself.
No matter what your love for surfing will always be there. Like any relationship you’ve got to embrace it. Get involved. Try. You can’t just cruise and hope everything will be okay. Without work any love will wither and die.
Even if it’s been years the embers are still there. Fan the flames. Let that love burn bright. Get in the flipping sea and remind yourself why you love surfing. That mojo is right there waiting for you…
How the rise of the smartphone is killing a noble institution…
This article was inspired by a weekend spent camping. A long weekend under canvas in a field above a beach. A stretch of sand backed by marram grass in the far northern reaches of the UK. It’s an area rich in castles and the ghosts of battles past. You can almost smell the history. What you can’t smell, as it’s pretty much impossible, is a mobile signal.
The area is known, even though it is an extremely popular tourist destination, to be a mobile black hole. You’re lucky to get one bar of signal standing on tip toes with the phone aligned with the moon and stars at the precise compass bearing to receive the faintest of signals.
It was a weekend in which I looked at my iPhone once. One time. To confirm there really was no signal and the urgent email I had to send would really have to wait until I got back to civilisation.
From that point on, I chucked it into the deepest recesses of my van and thought nothing more of it.
Twitter would go untweeted. Emails wouldn’t get read and Facebook, a service I’m don’t even use, would be gladly ignored as usual.
The lack of signal made me smile. The lack of phone masts and Luddite connectivity was a bonus. I love being off the grid. It happens so rarely these days that you need to embrace those times with both arms. So people had no recourse with their phones. They would have to be real life social not online social. This was a happening. An event. A weekend to be burnt into your deepest memory banks to be remembered when you need a smile. Which is the way all surf trips should be. Whether it’s a half day run down the coast, a two week mission to Europe or a twelve month jaunt around the planet.
You need to have your head up, living, experiencing and mentally recording the world … not be head down reading about other people’s more exciting lives on your mobile.
Time was a surf trip’s entertainment came in the form of books and a deck of cards. That was your lot. All other entertainment on flat days came from the banter with your mates, swimming, diving, fishing, exploring the local area, trying to pull and perhaps a jaunt to the cinema if it was in a language you could understand. For decades this was the surf trip.
You surfed, you read, you played Shithead to the death, maybe some travel Connect 4, and you arsed about as only mates on a surf trip can. You interacted with the world, each other and ended with hangovers and a whole pile of good memories.
Then Mr Sony changed everything in the early eighties by inventing the Walkman. A pocket sized, assuming you had fricking’ big pockets, personal stereo that played cassette tapes (ask your parents to show you a C90 kids, they are like MP3s but made of reality not zeros and ones).
This was the first blow. The first strike taking a chunk out of the shining aura of surf trip magic. The Walkman enabled people to opt out of partaking. The personal bubble had been invented. Rather than do fun stuff as a gang you could take yourself off and listen to the Smiths, INXS and Midnight Oil as much as you liked. Well, as long as the double-A batteries held out.
Then came the laptop. Which initially to be fair struck a blow back the other way. If someone brought a lappy along on a trip you could watch DVDs and pass those rainy flat afternoons with seasons of the Office and watch Taylor Steele’s latest opus until your eyes bled. At least everyone was hanging out together. Sure it’s not as fun as a card game but a lappy certainly beats Spanish soap operas when you are sitting out a week long onshore gale in the Canaries. As time went on more and more people got laptops. The weighty brick that’s useless where there’s no power outlets became a staple in the surfer’s carry on. This was the beginning of the end.
The rise of social media and the ‘always on’ culture has been with us for about five years. I’ve done trips where I’ve got up in the morning and asked the crew already up what the surf was like and got a shrug. They’d not walked 20 metres down the path by the house to check the surf as they preferred to sit on the couch and vegetate over Facebook.
That blew my mind. You don’t pay thousands of pounds to go to the other side of the world to look at Facebook. You can do that in the middle of winter at home when there are sheep being blown past the window by a vicious storm.
From around 2008 it’s been a steady decline. As Apple changed the concept of an Internet enabled phone from something needing a degree in computer science to something a three year old can use the majority of people now have an iPhone, iPad, lappy or other Internet able device.
Which means the first questions on any trip when arriving at the accommodation is not ‘How close are we to the surf, can we see the sea from the window, where’s the nearest pub?’ it’s now ‘Is there WiFi, what’s the password?’ Which is all kinds of sad.
Surf trips are now boring. Sure you still get the fun surf bit but the flat times and evening times when it’s too dark to surf are now like hanging out in a monastery sponsored by Apple.
A roomful of faces lit up by their dark mirrors. No one talks apart from to ask if you’ve seen some cat saying ‘Yaaasssss…’ on Vine yet. The idea of someone saying, ‘Hey guys, lets all put down our devices and do something fun together.’ Really needs to come front and centre.
Remember trips before smartphones? The laughs, the japes, the good times with people that you bonded with and got to know on these trips to make lifetime friendships? As in for real. Not just clicked ‘Add Friend’ and then never spoke to them again.
You want to look back on your surfing life with pride. At good times had. Of adventures good and bad. A couple that come readily to mind for me.
• The daily late afternoon ritual at a rustic surf camp in the arse end of nowhere in Fiji was to play a round of Shithead and the loser had to walk the three mile round trip to the nearest shop for a big box of beers and a bottle of rum for everyone to consume as cards got played deep into the night. The banter was legendary, the laughter off the scale, the good times seared deep.
• Playing Texas Hold’Em Poker to the death every night with Dion Agius, Kai Neville, Shieldsy and a steady stream of Aussie WQS hopefuls for a few weeks in Hawaii. An evening ritual that, yes did cost me dearly as I only won big one night, but was hilarious every night. A room full of strangers and casual acquaintances ripping the piss out of each other in that weird male bonding way.
These things would not have happened if everyone was in their bubble. The recent trips I’ve done, mainly with junior surfers, have been mind-blowingly dull as every evening it’s computer club. No cards, no banter, no adventures, just ‘have you seen what so-and-so has posted on their page’. Which is so wrong it ain’t even funny.
In future trip accommodation needs to be booked on a ‘If it does NOT have Wifi then we’ll take it’ basis. It’s the only way the surf trip will retain it’s dignity. Surf trips are supposed to be one of the funnest things you can do. We need to make sure this noble tradition does not fade and educate the youth as to how it’s supposed to be.
Here’s some ideas:
– Catch up on emails, check twitter, whack up your Insty pics and get creepy on FB in one hit. Just do an hour after the morning session when you’re unwinding and recovering and not up for any adventures.
– This one should apply at all times: no phones at meals. Ever. Not even on the table. It’s just plain rude to be checking your phone when out for a meal with your mates.
– Turn off the WiFi on your device in the evenings. Leave it in the room. Be real world social not online social. Make a point of doing something, anything rather than sitting around staring at the Interweb. Even if it is something terribly boring and medieval like reading a book.
– Bring cards. Play Shithead, learn poker, hell play anything to engage with people. If you want to involve drinking penalties or hard cash bets then your night will get exponentially funner.
– Explore the outside. That’s right. You can move away from the Internet connection and explore your surroundings.
– Don’t be a social media zombie. Life is passing you by while you stare at a tiny screen. All the more horrifying when you have paid good money to go somewhere amazing and exotic.
– Just look at stuff. Record it in your head. You don’t need to take a photo of everything. Your memories are yours and it’s best to have seen things with your own eyes rather than on an LCD screen.
Of course the Interweb and social media are not going anywhere. It’s tentacles are wrapped around modern life so tightly we have no choice but to deal with it. But we can use them as the tools they are meant to be. Entertainment, sharing and connectivity at the right time in the right place. A quick check of the forecast sure so you know where to go. Apart from that the right time is not on surf trips. Surf trips are your time to do get actual face time with your mates not FaceTime people back home.
The terrifying irony of ‘social’ media is the very thing that is supposed to be bringing us closer together is pushing us further apart. Let’s not go there. The surf trip needs to be kept special…
There’s nothing I hate more than inspirational quotes.
Well.
Hang on.
Custard, sweetcorn and alsatians* are top of the shit list but inspirational quotes bring up a solid fourth place. They’re a modern disease polluting the various social media. Which, if like me you’ve actively distanced yourself from that world then it’s not so much of a problem (Twitter is the only SM account I’m arsed about because it’s about words, ideas, wit and where the news breaks). But they’re still there. Do they serve any purpose? Much like the self help books telling you how to be thin/fit/rich/successful/productive. Has anyone ever read one and turned their life around? Words on a badly Photoshopped Instagram pic won’t change your life. Only you can do that … And big stuff happening to people around you has the power to push you in new directions as well.
I lost a friend recently. An old mucker, my age, just past 40, the ostensible half time whistle in an average life span. She was in remission from cancer and we thought had survived it. Then within a matter of weeks she went from walking and talking as per usual to dead. Which as many of you will appreciate that have lost mates and family to the harshest of diseases really makes you evaluate your life and your place in the world.
Life is a lottery. The healthiest, kindest, happiest, most loved people in the world get struck down in their prime while the worst scum and villains live to a ripe old age. It’s not fair but that’s how it is.
We’re lucky because we surf. We see the world differently. We spend time immersed in nature as much as possible. We see things most people never see. We don’t live on the couch playing video games growing steadily paler and fatter as our arteries inexorably harden. We travel. We explore. We immerse. We appreciate different cultures and don’t fear people from other lands; no matter how much the media and politicians encourage it.
Surfing is a gateway to a better life. And I’m so glad I stumbled through it all those moons ago. My choice of university, Aberystwyth, was purely based on ‘I can walk to the surf if I go there’ and my friends, career and life are a direct result of that decision. If I’d gone to some inland hell hole someone else would be writing this blather.
I’m a better person because of this addiction to riding waves. And the passing of my friend reinforced that passion. No inspirational quote in the world will make you want to seize every day, and kick you in the chuff to remind you of the stark fact our time here is limited, like losing someone.
We’re the lucky ones. We live a charmed life dancing on the edge of the ocean. Make the most of it while you can.
*It’s not so much I actively hate alsatians. It’s more they hate me. Like mega-badly. They just like to attack me. I don’t know if it is because they know I’m a cat person. There. I said it. I like cats. I like their aloof, arseholey, independent and occasionally loving nature. They can look after themselves. They’re not daft as a brush like dogs. Any cat, no matter how savage, will be my friend in less than a minute. I’m like a cat whisperer or something. Not to mention when civilisation ends cats are thought to become the dominant species after us…
We live on a damp collection of rocks clinging to the edge of Europe. Geographically insignificant they maybe, but these islands full of ideas, spirit and a mongrel mix of people from the whole planet have punched above their weight when it comes to contributing to global culture for centuries.
We’re open minded, tolerant, funny and self depreciating and I think we’re this way because of the weather. You have to have a solid sense of humour to put up with the British weather.
In all my travels I’ve never come across a nation as singularly obsessed with the weather as we are. Maybe it’s because we get a lot of it. Sure everyone in the world gets weather 24/7 but we are subject to more flavours of it, on a daily basis, than most. It’s all to do with our positioning. The sentinel on the edge of the continent. We’re the vanguard that the forces of the Atlantic weather systems strike first (sorry Iceland you’re not counting as Europe here as you’re technically just a ruddy big volcano covered in ice sat on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and it’s the stoicism and grit that comes from facing the world’s stormiest ocean that’s shaped our character. Not to mention making us and our ancestors some of the finest seafarers ever to have graced the brine.
Our weather is a four way tussle. That’s why it’s so changeable, so inconsistent, so infuriating and so ruddy difficult to forecast accurately.
A popular science TV show illustrated it well using four packs of rugby forwards. The Atlantic is one scrum coming from the west bringing the warm, damp weather, another pack is the Arctic front trying to bring the cold, another the continental types bringing the warmth and good coffee from Europe and lastly the aloof eastern pack bringing Siberian cold in winter and balmy warmth in summer. It’s a four way shoveathon all at the whim of the jet stream. It’s no surprise that our Met Office is the original and one of the most advanced and pioneering in the field. It’s also no surprise that when you stare at your weather app forecast for your town right that second and it says ‘sunny’ while it’s actually pissing down outside is standard.
Weather forecasting is vital in times of peace and war for safe transit of ships and planes. It’s even more vital for us surfers. Without it we’d be stuck with ‘going to the beach every day with our fingers crossed for surf.’ Sure some of you lucky buggers that live right on the coast do that anyway but for the masses that don’t live on the edge of the salt the weather is the key to happiness.
Just try it. See how many times you check the weather, or talk about the weather each day. We’re obsessed with it. And I for one think that’s awesome.
Shots from Fistral this afternoon. Angus Scotney hacking and the rest line-ups from one of those days everyone thought would be a bit bigger and better…
