Good call...

Every call has 2 sides and a lot of outcomes; things can go either way so what actually makes a good or bad call? A good one might be avoiding the pub thus avoiding being dumped by the missus, a possible hangover or any possible debauchery that could happen! Things can go either way with endless possibilities and outcomes that at the time of making that call you’d just never know or have any clue to how life will unfold. As any surfer finds out, a good call can be the difference between full surfing enlightenment or missing the session or wave of their blinkered little surf focused life’s and having some smart arse gloat at you later saying ‘should of been here earlier’ or ‘missed it’. So what’s the photo got to do with this dribble? Well it represents a chain of calls all linking together in an unforeseen scenario that brought joy, pain and heart break all in the space of a morning. It’s a heavy barrel which can throw further than it is tall, it also has injuries and broken boards written all over it but the rewards can be golden, but as I say only if you make the right call......

A barrell of laughs

There are a couple of things that put an instant smile on my face and make me happy, the first is obvious so i won't bore myself and just touch on the subject. Getting barrelled, heavy womping, throaty pits put a smile on my face and we’ve had a few the past few days. The second is way more interesting and entertaining, I just love taking photos of funny looking animals, they don’t have to be funny but it does help and truth be known if I had to put a percentage on either, of which i liked best with 50% being equal for fun factor it would be a hard one, maybe the bigger or deeper the barrel the more fun and bigger the smile but then again the funnier the animal or better the shot is pretty high up there too. So this is Bob and the bobettes the gineafowl and they’re pretty much the funniest animals I’ve seen since the first time I met Clive, Barry and Nigel the midget pony’s from Ireland. http://andrewcottonsurfer.blogspot.com/2010/03/meet-clive-barry-and-nigel-we-go-way.html Bob and his crew hang out in front of the house screeching at the top of their funny little lungs from dawn to dusk then they sleep in the top of the tree to the right of the house, they used to sleep in the tree to the left but about 3 months ago Bob got sick of it and moved everyone to the right, must of just fancied a change of scenery or something along those lines as both trees are pretty similar. They also sort of like company so follow you about but as soon as you walk towards them the whole pack descends into panic and chaos and they disperse with flapping wings and squawks only to regroup and start following you again. I just love it and to top it all off they only cost about £1.60 each which has got to be the best value for entertainment and smile factor ever.

Negative

Negative, moody and grumpy. I tend to make these involuntary deep groaning noises and say things like ‘agh, nightmare’ ‘agh, scenario’ ‘scenic disaster’ and ‘agh, get me out of here’ pretty much whatever I say has the groan in front of it almost like it just pains me just to communicate. this is what happens when I’m in the wrong frame of mind and start having bad surf’s not helped by people around you having fun and saying things like ‘yeah but look how beautiful everything is’ or ‘just enjoy yourself’ I just let the silence be my response then slip in another ‘agh’. You just need to start afresh; you know new place, new surroundings, and different frame of mind, draw a line in the sand walk over it to a different trip and start from scratch.......blah blah blah! We’ve just moved into a friend of mine’s house, it’s a truly an amazing spot and it’s been about 7 years since we last met. How’s the wild parrots in the garden this morning, loving life........

Abnormal

I’m abnormal, abnormally white. Somewhere along the line I must have inherited ginger genes, which isn’t a bad thing is it? I’m not ginger, well not really and neither are my parents but I’m guessing my granddad was or possibly even further back they must have been raging red heads with an abnormal white skin tone. Being abnormally white isn’t much of a problem at home as it’s a common fait amongst a lot of English folk, not that it’s a massive problem here it’s just embarrassing and harder to blend in, people stare and a couple of kids have even pointed but only a few have had the balls to comment. So what’s the photo got to do with this? Well nothing but look how much browner Selway is than me.

Surfing Mennie Waves

About 6 months ago I was at the ‘Funder zone’ in Barnstaple with my little nephew Freddie, generally having a brilliant time going down the massive slide they’ve got there and hanging out in the ball pool which coincidently Freddie is still a little un sure of, he’s not even 2 yet you see and these things take time. My phone goes and at a glance I see its Al, we generally spend a lot of time on the phone as it’s that long distance relationship thing we got going. During the conversation which was a lot about nothing he just casually drops in ‘oh yeah and I’ve just finished writing my book’ I almost didn’t pick up on it at first and he actually had to repeat it before I heard him properly. I was sort of stuck for words but in the back of my brain was thinking ‘yeah right big man, stroll on your having a laugh’ and ‘who on earth is going to want to read a book about you? You ain’t no Katie Price mate’ but as the conversation went on I realised how serious he was and I refrained from speaking my mind and went with the flow. Obviously he mailed me over a draft for a seal of approval, problem is I’m not much of a reader, got this short attention span thing going on and nothing really goes in, words merge into one and lines blur and I find myself just starring into thin air, I think that’s why I did so badly at school. Once I did start reading it though I couldn’t put it down, I found things out about him I never knew and it was interesting seeing his take on things we’ve done together. I’d recommend this book to anyone who wants to be inspired a definite good and interesting read, Fair play Al is there anything you don’t do? Check it out at http://almennie.com/

The pocket pat.

‘You’re not going to believe this but I must of left my driver’s licence at home’ where the words that came from Selways mouth at the airport car hire desk in Perth as he did that pocket pat thing that people do when they pretend they’re looking for something, It wasn’t a problem I’ve got mine and if I put it on my credit card you can pay me back, but now 2 days into the trip and about 15 hours of driving later I’m not so sure i believe him and feel he just blatantly looked me in the eye and lied to me. It’s like one of those situations that just niggle away at the back of your mind, tension building up more and more as time goes on and so does the driving. Things nearly came to blows today as we ended up driving down some dirt track to check out this particular spot, about 15 minutes of bumps and rock dodging with sketchy speed burst’s through patchy sand sections my patients where getting exceptionally thin, not helped by Ben’s encouraging words of wisdom ‘doing great here cotty’ ‘yeah, yeah amazing’. Going down a particularly steep bit with massive rocks and dips I panicked and decided to change lines half way through my decent, bad move, the car tipped and nose dived leaving me balancing on 2 wheels and the bumper, my deposit flashed before my eyes and the words of wisdom from Ben suddenly came to a halt as we all froze and the car became silent. Between us and the car behind we came through the experience pretty much unscathed apart from the bit where I looked like a total prat as they heaved and pushed the car for a solid minute with no success while I still had the hand brake on.

Tent's on planes.

I’d been drifting in and out of sleep for about 3 hours, as you do on planes. Finding a good position until a body part loses its feeling, goes numb thus waking you up with severe pins and needles and a split second of panic that you’ll never get the movement back to the particular body part in question. Through one of these position changes I heard we had 40 minutes to landing, I didn’t even open my eyes I just sat there and pondered what I had actually heard as I’m sure they said 40 minutes till landing in...... London Heathrow? I opened my eyes to see what was going on and on the route map displayed on the little screen in front of me the plane symbol was heading back towards the UK. In my confused state I asked one of the hostesses but didn’t really get any sense just ‘yes yes we’ll be landing in Heathrow in 30 minutes now’ not a why, when or how. This brought on much speculation between myself and Selway as we tried to come up with reasons of why we had actually been in the air for nearly 5 hours but where only 30 minutes from landing in Heathrow, the one place we defiantly didn’t want to be. Selway went down the more sensible route saying ‘it’s probably some sort of minor computer/technical error or something along those lines’ but then redeemed himself by suggesting we make a little tent with the blanket between the seats and ‘have a little cuddle just in case’. I ran through the nonsensical options like ‘the captain must have left his pack lunch in London’ or ‘he forgot his mobile phone’ all of which was very unlikely but I was trying to make light of the circumstances that we were actually heading back to London. Anyway to cut a massive long nightmare short which at various points almost brought me to tears, it took us about 48 hours of travelling to get to WA, but we’re here. The suns shining and the surf looks like it’s going to be amazing and just in case you were wondering we never did make the blanket tent in between the seats.

Panic Stations

I’m off to West Aus and I feel like one of those fluffy pink Duracel bunnies in the adverts, all smiles with lots of energy and wide eyes, going really fast. I’ve been pretty fortunate really as I get to travel quite a bit, some years more than others and some trips longer than others but I still get the same old feelings every time I know I’m going away. These feelings consist of excitement, joy, guilt, anxiety with a bit of nervousness thrown in there somewhere but strangely enough the biggest one is panic, not panicking about flying or missing the flight, I panic about board selection and what’s best to take and it proper gets me down. As the what if’s go through my mind and reality that I actually have a baggage allowance and i have to lug the dam things half way round the world, boards fall by the wayside and my quiver slowly takes shape but it’s just getting there that’s the problem.

Organised chaos

This is Richard from http://wavedreamer.co.uk/ in his organised chaos. I went round his office this morning at 7.30am to pick up some cameras he's so kindly lending me. In the past he's had me riding girls bikes, surfing retro fishes and even once had me having tea with the vicar, All in the name of making 'beautiful' things for people to watch and i think that's why i like filming with him. For example i dropped some footage round his office last week and whilst in the kitchen making a cup of tea i hear him shriek 'Oh Andrew this is amazing' We've got some real great stuff here' I came back into the office to see him watching a reflection of my board in the water, very odd i thought but what ever makes you tick. We'll just see how the footage turns out but no doubt I'm positive it will have some beautiful clips in there and hopefully a bit of surfing too!

Dan

Meet Dan, we go back a few years now, well come to think of it he used to avoid me like the plague but there was good reason for this as I was bombarding him with calls, emails and sending him portfolios every 3 weeks hounding him for sponsorship with GRAVIS, He did a pretty good job of avoiding me for some time until about 5 years ago he pulled me to one side at a trade show and introduced me to Analog and I haven’t looked back since. Dan’s a London geezer and can talk more about a pair of shoes than Jan Ernst Matzeliger and he can tell you a thing or two about a YKK zipper and the super stretch they use on the boardies too. Anyway I met up with Dan last night down in Newquay, we talked the talk as we always do, I moan at him and he tells me he’s ‘always thinking’ but we have a laugh, Ordered up my summer attire and checked out the coming winter collection which I might say looks pretty dam amazing.

Clive, Barry and Nigel

Meet Clive, Barry and Nigel, we go way back and every time I’m passing I always do my best to stop by and say hi in fact I have been known to drive almost 1 ½ hours out my way just to see them but as luck would have it their field where they usually hang out over looks the sickest right hander. So it’s almost like an excuse to see them and my mates don’t think I’m too weird for driving out my way just to look at 3 funny little midget pony’s. I wonder how many sick waves they’ve seen go un ridden? My guess is it’s a fair few. Word of warning though you got to watch Barry, as he’s a right little nibbler. Ah bless...............