The way that I do it.

Long ago a wise man once told me ‘It’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it’. Take from that what you will but I think I know what he was getting at which is why after the drunken phone calls, twitter harassment, leg humping and chasing the Editor-in-Chief of the above magazine through a field I’d be pretty surprised if they’d ever want to run a shot of me for the rest of my surfing days. Fair enough why would they.
So you could say I was shocked when I heard they wanted to run a shot of me in the above issue although at the same time extremely happy. But when I bought my copy, which you can too from any good news agent and realised I didn’t have just one but two double page shots and a couple of inserts I couldn’t quite believe it. They even describe me as their ‘favourite plumber’.
Might phone him up late on Saturday night, early Sunday morning and thank him personally or maybe just hump his leg again next time I see him, I know how much he’d appreciate it.

A funny joke

So an English man, Irish man, French man, Spanish man and a Portuguese man all arrive on this island right...... Really they did, this isn’t one of the racist jokes that used to be so popular at school it’s the European Analog surf trip to the Mentawai-surfcamp and after a brief few hours in a air conditioned room in a swanky hotel in Padang we all endured a horrific boat ride, it could of been amazing but the second we left the port the sky’s clouded and the wind began to blow, too tell you the truth I was shitting it and it wasn’t helped by the fact our 2 captains were chain smoking the whole journey whilst surrounded by open barrels of fuel and I couldn’t help but keep thinking the worst case scenario, would we slowly burn or be blown sky high but we all arrived safely although a little wet.
Remember I told you about my mate Dave back a long, well after all my scepticism he invited me to come visit him and said I could bring a couple mates. Me being a bloody nice bloke and all round top guy decided to ask my euro team buddy’s for bit of male bonding, in a good way of course not the tops off cuddling each other way although that may or may not happen but in the team building way and getting to know each other that little bit better and of course get some waves, some shots and a few clips.
I’ll let you know how it goes and how the waves are too.

DonJoy Advert

Thought I’d post this DonJoy Ad as unless you subscribe to Orthopaedic Product News, which is a magazine read by surgeons and other medical practitioners involved in orthopaedics you probably won’t see it. Pretty unlikely sponsor but when you have the sort of luck I do it’s a pretty dam good one and without their super light weight custom knee braces I wouldn’t have been able to surf last winter so for me it’s been essential.
There’s a few things I can tell you about this photo which may or may not interest you, it was taken one evening at a little beachie called Windmills by Selway/wavelength in West Australia: another thing would be that this is me doing a turn and although admittedly it isn’t a very good one it is a turn and it doesn’t happen very often. Secondly is that prior to this wave I had a full on freak out, I mean like a proper emotional surf breakdown. I’d spent nearly 30 mins at this beachie without even getting a wave, I cracked and paddled in a broken man, chucked my board in a massive bush and demanded we get the fuck outta here, preferably via somewhere I can sell all my boards so I have some cash before I embark on a 2 week bender in Perth and actually start having some fun. Surprisingly enough I didn’t get much resistance from Selway.
 ‘yeah whatever you want to do cotton but the lights still pretty sick and Jayce or Capel are still getting good waves’
I sat on the beach for a few minutes before losing the plot with the constant bombardment of fly’s landing on my face, It all seemed to be going from bad to worse and the realisation that maybe surfing wasn't that bad of an option I decided to try and retrieve my board from the bush I so stupidly launched it into a few minutes earlier, this wound me up even more because it was really deep and the bush had those horrible thorns on it which really ‘stuck in’ as I frolicked about searching for my board, maybe I slightly over reacted and I need to find a bit more patience.
I ended up going back in and getting a couple waves before dark, but the third thing was when going through the photos later on it was remarked that although this was a ‘nice’ photo it would never ever get used and probably should have just been deleted of the back of the camera like most of my shots that day.
I’m pretty happy it wasn’t.

Chuckle Brothers

Check out Paul and Barry Chuckle this morning in Croyde; think they were filming some sort of comedy sketch in the village ‘Chuckle brothers go surfing’ or something along those lines. 'To me, to you, to me, to you'!
Actually, if you haven't guessed already, its not the Chuckle Brothers but it is like something they'd do, and if i'm honest I haven’t got the foggiest who these guys are, apart from i guess there heading to surf the infamous Croyde low tide as they heard in The Thatch last night that there's some sick banks at the north end at the moment, and you can obviously tell by the little looks on their little faces they don’t know me. But I just couldn’t help but get a photo, seen quite a few of these little scenarios in the past week but this is the first time I’ve actually managed to capture and document one.
 Your probably thinking what the hell am I dribbling on about, but look closely at the photo again and tell me what’s wrong with it! You don’t have to be a surfer or even have studied physics at a degree level to work this one out. Yet why do you see this so often? Or is it a ‘logic’ thing going on here ‘well that’s how they’re supposed to go in the sea, so obviously that’s how they go on the roof rack’ This sort of thing goes in the same category as the Wetsuit Shopping situation that I mentioned a few weeks back, actually in fact the driver does look familiar, doesn’t he?
Hells bells this is summer and surfing in the UK and I freaking love it.

Nothing about surfing

The new Wavelength surf mag is out which has got the West Aus trip I did back in March/April in it, I got a couple shots in there and it’s a pretty good read too. Take the opening shot for example; this is me in full depression mode whilst checking the surf in the second week. 10 or so days into the trip and no real gold in the bag to speak of can get you down, that combined with emotional and mental relationship trauma and the thought of a much needed knee operation looming on my return to London, I wasn’t the happiest person on the planet and probably not the funniest person to be around either. But I did pick myself up a couple of times and stuff myself into a place where you can never be sad and things always look a whole lot better, which can make any trip worthwhile and the darkest day a whole lot brighter. Yeeew

Photos:Selway/Wavelength