who steals used flip flops?

You should see their little faces; I think I’ve found my vocation in life as some sort of motivational speaker and team leader.
 Any way enough of them check out my new Gravis flip flops which I got just in time for my adult/guardian/mentor role in Spain. I finally received them after about 3 months and about 30 emails. Just for your information there’s about 6 pairs of these flops somewhere in Europe in little parcels all with my name and address on missing, or that’s what Charlie from gravis has had me believe, I have no reason not too as he’s a pretty straight up kind of guy. It’s no surprise really as I said to him the other day ‘me and flip flops are jinxed’ I just can’t seem to keep a pair for more than a couple of weeks, which really fecks me off as it always takes at least a week to break any worthy flip flop in and make them feel like they’ve really become a part of you. Who the fuck steals flip flops anyway?
I’ll give you a example of this so if you can’t be arsed to read on I’ll understand as this could be a pretty boring post but then again some people might be genuinely interested in my flip flop tails of wow and a insight to the kind of person who actually steals a pair of second hand flip flops.
This pair was my first pair which I’d managed to keep hold of for a record amount of weeks and I believe was my best pair to date. I wasn’t oblivious though as I knew people had their eyes on them, the odd comment here and there like ‘nice flops cott they look super comfy’ then out the corner of my eye I would see them quietly trying them on for size.
Whilst in Hawaii last year my little African friend Mikey said these sorts of things a lot and I knew I could never trust him,  I’d been warned about saffa’s in the past and also experienced them first hand, Devon’s full of them! but I’m not one to stereotype and would give anyone the benefit of the doubt and to be fair we were getting along nicely and formed a good little partnership in the surf and on the social side too, pushing ourselves above and beyond on more than a few occasions.
Lesson learned right there as one morning I woke up to find my flip flops missing, foggy headed I searched franticly, re traced my tracks and even missed my morning surf due to my concerns. How could I surf? All I could think about was my flops. I went a step further and started asking complete strangers if they’d seen them and filled out a ‘MISSING’ advert and posted it in Foodland, but all this was to no avail, Vanished into thin air suspiciously along with my friend Mikey too.
3 months later I get a call from my old boss at the RNLI saying they had a package for me which had just turned up addressed very oddly; Att: Andrew Cotton,  RNLI lifeguard, Croyde beach, Croyde, Devon.
I couldn’t even believe that this had ever reached me and to my surprise when I opened the package it was my flip flops. Barely recognisable, pretty much worn through and with the right one carrying a broken thong, my heart sank and a tear came to my eye, at least they found their way home and I could lay them to rest.
Turned out Mikey did have a conscience, although he returned them used, abused and unusable he did return them.
If anyone comes across the other 6 pairs that i never received from gravis but were addressed correctly please let me know. Wonder how long these bad boys will last?

Responsible adult

photo: Richard Hallman

It’s funny the initial reaction you get when you say something to someone that there not quite expecting. Over the past few weeks it’s this reaction that has got me a little paranoid, almost like I feel I’m being judged or labelled. At times I may be a bit of a loose cannon but this is just me trying to vent my frustrations on life or thats my excuse, and this highly addictive personality situation I’ve got never helps things either, but the real fact is I’m a trust worthy, reliable and responsible bloke most of the time. I’ve looked after and been responsible for friends businesses, houses, cats and dogs with no major hiccups in the past and I’m even allowed take my 2 year old nephew Freddie swimming on occasions and he bloody loves it.
 So why when I mention to anyone that I’m off to Spain next week as I’m going with the Devon team as an adult/guardian and mentor, I get this nervous laugh back usually followed by something like ‘what?’ or ‘Really?’ I just don’t get it. Surely they meant to say ‘what a bloody nice bloke you are Cotton, giving up your time and energy for free just for the benefit of the Devon youth. I hope they realise how privileged and lucky they are to have the opportunity of spending the week with a top athlete such as yourself’ or something along those lines or words to that effect.
Oh, the photo above has nothing what so ever to do with this, it’s just I wanted to post a picture of myself surfing a big fecking wave, so I did. This is me at Nelscott reef in the states. Big wave, bad line and I got ruined. But how good’s this blog thing? No rules here, makes me feel like there’s less barriers in life and eases the day to day frustrations I’m constantly faced with.
Fingers crossed with the responsibility of Spain and I’ll let you know how it all unfolds.

Ad sense and fake tan

So this is the new Euro Analog advert starring yours truly, there’s something about featuring in an advert which is better than just having a photo in a mag and I’m all stoked out about it to be honest. When I was in my early twenties all I wanted was to get a shot in a surf mag and this felt like it was pretty unlikely to ever happen, let alone have a company use me for their advertising and actually be surfing not just standing there like a unemployed plumber trying to look freaking hot, sexy and intelligent all at the same time which can be quite hard work sometimes. My old legs do look abnormally white though which I’m not too happy about, they could of least spent some time on it and used a bit of Photoshop to make me look a little less ill, British and white. Don’t like the sun much you see and not really into that lying/sunbathing thing that so many people seem to do. Might head down to boots in the high street to get a load of that fake tan stuff and really get me tan on, I think I need it.

Piece of piss

I wrote a little piece about tow surfing in the new WL and they run a little shot of me in there too. The shot was taken at Aileens last November by Pete Fleming although I see in the mag they’ve credited Arron Pierce which is unfortunate for Pete but a bonus for Arron, I’m pretty sure Pete took it as Arron’s more a cliff or boat guy and I know there was definitely no boats out there on this day. There was a few ski’s out there though but only a few of us got some waves, I shoulder hopped a couple as to be fair I was shitting it. It wasn’t the fact that it was big just the fact the Aileens is a scary place at size and to be honest aint that much of a big wave spot. It breaks wide and shuts down where as when its smaller it focuses on the inside ledge and turns into a perfect barrel, if you fall when its big here your having a serious nightmare as the rip takes you back into the wave and into the cliff, it just frightens me to think of the consequences of being stuck at the bottom of that cliff and no one being able to get you.
Any way this was my intro to tow surfing and to read the rest you’ll have to check out the mag......

Tow surfing is a piece of piss, just fork out 10 grand on a jet ski or if your clever get some clueless marketing guy from a big company to buy you one, find some stupidly shallow and dangerous slabs or wait for a massive swell and boom you’re a famous pro surfer living off lucrative sponsorship deals, thrown into the surfing hall of fame never actually even having to paddle into wave.

Our lives there hands

Now don’t get me wrong, I know how important security is and I understand the problems we're facing, what with terrorism and airports and all but sometimes I just don't get people who work at these security check points. What sort of courses do they put them on and is there actually an exam at the end whereby some means they can pass or fail? Because at the end of the day these people are responsible for our safety in the air and are there to stop some mentalist from blowing up a plane or some other crazy shit they might have come up with or feel the need to inflict on others.
So this is a little real life scenario I had last winter when travelling to a big wave contest in Oregon. My bag got taken to one side after going through the scanner along with my shoes and other personal belongings. The security guy does the usual questions 'Is this your bag' 'did you pack it yourself' and then asks me to come to another desk. He ends up emptying my bag and putting all my things back through the scanner.
When I travel to go tow surfing I take dive weights which I attach to my board depending on conditions, size of swell and the weight I want my board. I carry them in my hand luggage as I have a few different weights and all combined there fair heavy and its less excess luggage. These weights seemed be causing some sort of situation amongst the security team in Chicago international airport. I piped up and politely said 'they're dive weights if you're wondering what they are' the man rudely shouted back 'I know what they are'. Then while I'm standing there watching, waiting, I see one of them mimicking hitting his colleagues over the head with one of the said weights which he held in his hand.
After a couple more minutes of what looked like some sort of basketball team talk around my belongings the guy came back to me. 'These here dive weights could be used as an extreme weapon if you chose to.' He once again picked up the weight and mimicked hitting someone over the head with it. 'Oh' is all I said. 'Well, I don't plan to use it in that way.' There was a bit of a silence and I could see in his eyes he was thinking hard of what to say next. 'Well that's good then cause you could do some real damage with these if you used them as a weapon'.
So after telling me how dangerous my dive weights could be to myself and others around me I was preparing for the worst, waiting for the words 'I'm going to have to take these off you'. I took some deep breaths and used my Chinese self-calming techniques I learnt from being in these sort of life situations before, But just as I was about as calm as I could be possible be he simply bypassed this completely and told me I could re-pack my bag and carry onto my boarding gate. You what? After all that. Has the world gone mad? He just told me how dangerous this weight could be as a weapon. Showed me how to use it and then packed me off on my way to board my next plane! Just in case you wondered I didn’t use the weights as a weapon but I did attach them to my board when I got to Lincoln City.

Model behaviour and single

Check me out, ‘hot freaking shit’ you’re probably thinking. Yep been doing a bit of modelling work, one job in particular is for this high end fashion brand called Griffin, to think my ex girlfriend dumped me. To be fair, possible factors among others for this were that she thought I was a liability with the booze; her mates hated me and she was fed up with me having no money yet managing to be away whenever and where ever the surf was good. But look at me now, I’m a freaking model.
Strange and this might not be a best way to put this, but I did actually put a whole heap of love and effort into that relationship. Notably more than others in the past which even had a few of my mates getting a little worried at the fact they might lose me, as I blindly hoped, skipped and jumped down the path towards eternal bliss, marriage and kids. Nah never happened, I had my heart ripped out my chest and kicked around the cold concrete floor, before I even got the chance to get half of the way down that stupid path.
So where am I going so terribly wrong? On paper I’m not that bad, am I?
Skilled and qualified tradesman who can plumb a house or install solar panels and a full heating system, whatever takes your fancy. This also makes me generally pretty nifty around the house and with DIY situations which has got to be a positive in anyone’s books.
Surfboard shaper, glasser and sander, ok this was some time ago but these sorts of skills stay with you for life I have you know and you never know when they might come in handy.
Professional Surfer and all round nice bloody bloke, I admit this isn’t bringing in millions of pounds but it’s a passion and you only have to read through a couple of my blogs to see how happy this makes me!
And now as like iceing on this already delicious Andrew Cotton cake I’ve made it into the cut throat world of freaking modelling, well for a couple of days anyway.
Who wants to go down the boozer and celebrate, but you’ll have to pay as I’m skint and not got a penny on me, then when I get home I’ll book a flight to Ireland,  last minute of course as there’s a sneaky little chart on the cards which has fun, fun, fun written all over it........ Any nice, single girls fancy a date?

Loving life

So what’s this all about? Someone very funny wrote this on the back of my hire car on a trip I did last winter. Don’t worry it actually wasn’t a suicide wagon, I don’t tend to travel with a garden hose as it’s just another thing to add the excess baggage, with all my boards and other shit I usually drag round with me. Plus you could probably pick one up anywhere from a decent DIY or garden centre if you really had the impulse or felt the need.
The thing is I’m not actually that miserable and negative all the time, in fact I see myself as pretty easy going and a kind of ‘The cups half full’ kind of guy, which may be hard to believe as I have just read through some of my previous blogs I’ve written and I’d say a good 85% of them are pretty dark and a bit of a rant.
It’s just that I’m not always outwardly happy and all smiles and if I don’t know people that well I tend to be a little shy and keep myself to myself (unless I’ve had more than 2 pints) and I hate making pointless small talk when sometimes there’s just no need.
If I remember rightly I actually really enjoyed this trip, it was an odd one as the crew was pretty big which is usually something I would avoid and although the surf wasn’t epic I had fun waves and surfed my face off for a solid 7 days. The thing was though because I wasn’t out celebrating or being all stoked every day and night, everyone thought I was miserable and hating life. It was even said I was projecting my mood with anyone who was unlucky enough ride with me to wherever we were surfing that day. You could tell it was that ‘shot gun not riding with Cotty’ scenario going on as everyone knew they’d enter the car happy and if like magic came out at the final destination miserable and possibly suicidal.
Personally I honestly don’t think it was me, that dam car must have been jinxed or something along those lines because i was loving life.