Read on only if you dare!
Hidden in darkness, I blink out through calloused
eye-holes. My brows prickle with the exertion of simply
being 46.
Tears well up at the glare of Antipodean vigour streaming in
thought the
windows. I repeatedly awaken these days to find myself strapped
into a sort of biomechanical exoskeleton, woven of ossified
visceral fat, emotional scar tissue and wasted
opportunity.
Somewhere a tanned young man of muscular passion shouts
forlornly in the distance, woolly and indistinct.
What’s he saying? The swash of the sea overtakes his voice.
“Dissolution” and “oblivion” it chants, endlessly. Gratefully I
greet the nights and every respite of sleep. I dream of a head full
of hair, and the caress of tight-skinned turns on a cerulean
playing field.
Twenty years of mostly not surfing had taken their toll. Between
the acid-bath of dedicated alcoholism and the numbed-ass, anti-yoga
of time-clock computer worship, my muscle memory had gone;
departed, disintegrated, dissolved, deliquesced.
As does wet-rot fungus and termites to the wooden balustrades of
those derelict mansions in the woods, merely the idea of timber
remains beneath a skin of varnish, crumbling under the lightest
touch when asked to again serve.
I had tried to surf repeatedly over my extended northern
European tenure, but my attempts started to feel like
self-abuse.
“It’ll be better next time,” I’d say, shivering on the cobbled
beach.
My previously honed late-drops-to-victory were completely wasted
on the grey mush which followed here. The promising form of a peak
turned into a slumped shoulder immediately following the first
bottom turn and left me eternally hanging.
You could hear the groans of the denied cutbacks as they
fluttered away like ghosts unspent. They continued to rattle me as
I paddled back out for another shot at the only North Sea swell in
a month pretending to be over two feet.
The starkness between my tropical memories and the cold
rationality of my absurd windmill-tilting was heartbreaking.
Far easier then, as I started aging ungracefully, to just
skateboard to the grocery store in between the rain showers,
ducking beneath overhanging hedges for a barrel-effect. Getting
stoned in the flat yet again, and later laughing with mates in the
pub. Spending years, trying not to think back to warm lefts off the
reef and sand between toes as I drover home barefoot.
A sort of tide rose and brought a serious partner, a full-time
office job, children, family stress and suburban routine. My boards
lay in the corner of a dusty shed. The call of the water went
unanswered.
“Who’s got time for that? And what’s even the fucking point in
that slop?”
Eventually, a new tide brought opportunity to festoon the shore.
We upped-sticks, decamped, emigrated.
We came seeking a better life for the kids and new horizons for
bored bones. Resignations were tendered, the bottle left behind, a
fluttering standard raised against the bitter wind. The contents of
house and shed were stowed into a large shipping
container. A
strange gleam sparked in my eyes as the old sleds were slung into
the truck.
Now, I pilot my creaking flesh down a bush track towards the
burning grains of an Australian beach, an archaic board from my
glory days tucked under my arm.
Bird calls, lizards underfoot, the fragrance of foliage lifting
into the sun all bathe me in a reminder of environmental riches I
had missed in that far northern mist.
Time pissed against the wall and up in smoke.
“Nevermind,” I say to myself, “here I am.”
I emerge from the low canopy and see hipsteroid beauties of all
sexes picnicking on a grassy plateau, now giggling at the kooky old
fool with a dad-hat, pale skin and dumb grin.
They shake their heads as I pick my way past, clutching a
yellowed 6’ 10” and heading for onshore, under-head-high beach
break closeouts.
They will be me sooner than they realise.
Yes, George, youth is wasted on the young.
A truth so painful, it should surely be made in thirty-foot tall
letters of basalt and installed on hundreds of cliff tops round the
planet.
A long-sleeved rash shirt, very old, shields me from the solar
din. I slip into the delicious waters of a delightfully uncrowded
bay. I choke on a sour inward laugh at the lithe youth lounging on
the shore, earth-toned pastel fish and hi-perf wafers stuck
nose-first into the sand. Quirky-retro longboards, casually
scattered round colourful towels complete the social media
shots.
Various owners intertwine limbs under frilly umbrellas. They’ve
been here for a few hours. catching a few sets here and there
in-between self-conscious preening and canoodling.
Do I envy them? Of course.
To be fair, mostly for the opportunity to hit the peaks before
the wind took a shit on the swell. I had kids to look after and
housework to do or I might have been here much earlier to attempt
to flail about on cleaner faces for their bemusement. I admire
their firm flesh. The naiveté and lack of wisdom is something I am
glad to have behind me.
Over months, I work at to lose the blubbery Kook-Suit. Newly
tanned skin now shows through hard-won cracks. Every time I go over
the falls and lose myself in the washing machine, I remember to
rejoice and relax. I missed this so much. I wanted to be here for
so many years.
Now, where I used to squeeze the pips and work the rind with my
rear foot, my front foot so often is unanswerably dominant. This
leaden stance is bogging me down at every turn. The fruit of my
performance falls away again and rolls into the corner of the
beach, un-juiced.
My abs begin to tighnten. My paddling gets stronger, my pop-up
is returning but my hair never will.
I have to laugh, but oh fuck it hurts. Online surfing tips are
now taken in earnest as a serious focus of mature study after
children are in bed.
“Chin Up!”
“Look up or you go down.”
“Focus on where you want to go.”
The mantras I mutter to myself in the lineup, unnerving those in
the next take-off zone. I try and concentrate on the beauty of
every moment. I am in the water, good or bad weather. I celebrate
the days I slog it out in the slop as basic training to help me
enjoy the good stuff. Not something to share at the dinner table,
however, to a working wife and clueless children.
Occasionally, I can hear the voice of that cocky young man a
little clearer. He is smiling and laughing gently at my antics on
the Other Side of the Hill. He seems to encourage me to keep going
in that endearingly optimistic way of invincible youth.
“Of course you can do it, just push harder! This used to be as
effortless as breathing, don’t you remember?”
A movie plays again in my mind’s-eye, a first-person clip from
days of yore. A casual take off and a wiggle to a barrel, the long
arc out onto the blue-green shoulder followed by a
cutback.
The film breaks and reels clatter as the harsh light of the
projector illuminates the my reality.
