Surf Nation

A bad dream and a pulled calf

The recovery continues. The other day, inspired by my brother Chris and physio Zelah - who both performed admirably in the Endurance Life Coastal Trail Series marathon and half-marathon respectively - I went for a run. I hadn't planned on running, but was walking the dogs and had a sudden impulse to run. It went pretty well, too. I managed about three quarters of a mile before stopping - not bad for someone who hadn't run at all for six months.

Then I went and overdid it. In the evening, emboldened by imagining that I was now fully fit again, I went for a walk and decided to do the same run. This time I ran for about a mile before disaster struck. Well, I say "disaster" but after neck surgery it wasn't all that bad - I pulled the muscle in my left calf. No surprise, really - even a couple of miles' running after six months of inactivity is a bit of a stretch.

However, the incident must have played on my subsconscious, for today I woke up with an awful dream. I was swimming, perhaps in a pool, or maybe the sea, but wherever it was the water was crystal clear. I dived underneath and was swimming about six or seven feet beneath the surface. Then, rather than being the swimmer, I became a pair of eyes watching me, the swimmer. I watched as I went to kick my legs to the surface, but in the act of doing so somehow jarred my neck so badly that the nerves were severed. That one kick was my last - but would it be enough to propel me to the surface? And once I got there, what would I do? I was paralysed. I'd pushed myself too far, too soon. Even if I got to the light and air there'd be nothing I could do.

Then I woke up. And I resolved, damn it, that I am going to complete the annual Brisons to Priest's Cove swim again. Meanwhile, as I reflect on life with ice on my calf, I will take it easy on the next run.

(But isn't it great? - To write in terms of 'the next run'. A few months ago my left leg was spastic and I couldn't have run anywhere to save my life. I owe a lot to the neurosurgery dept at Derriford. Maybe if I complete the Brisons swim I could raise some cash for them? Now there's a thought...)

Writers: like vacuum cleaners, only broken

For the past few weeks I've been cracking on with a book. Immersion in the world of words produces strange results but none, aside from the paranoia, clinical insanity and obsession with Sun Ra, that I regret. I've been helped out considerably by my good friend Thad, who lets me use a room at the Abbey Hotel for the solitude that is a sine qua non of literary endeavour, and have also been grateful to a former editor who reminded me of the strange genius to be found in the work of Richard Brautigan.

This, in turn, reminds me of my good friend and fellow surfing scribe Neil from the East - to whom I owe at least a couple of e-mails. Likewise, many others of late, not least former Sennen lifeguard Graham. I'm sorry to all for my epistolatory failure and cannot, this time, blame illness: my post-ACDF neck is well and truly on the mend and as for the Lyme, things have taken a turn which is very much to the good. I have another op for something else looming, but in the great scheme of things - and there is one - it's de minimis, as Richard Brautigan's fellow American high priest of the absurd, Donald Barthelme, almost certainly would never have said.

All this brings me to Brautigan, the only man to combine mention of Proust and sombrero hats in the same novel. In Sombrero Fallout, an American comedic writer's Japanese girlfriend muses on a lesson she has absorbed through a life well-lived:

"... she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was too complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it.

This, for us sensitive writerly types, is bad enough, but it gets worse:

She wanted her next lover to be a broom.

Image courtesy of G Travels.

Bryson takes the spoils at the Highland Open. But is he a better poker player now?

As the warm weather caresses the far west of Cornwall my thoughts have turned to the O'Neill Highland Open. It's been truly Baltic up in Caithness as the event has unfolded. I hear that Big John Navin International, the Harkon and Matt Smith paid a ceremonial visit to what was christened 'Wade Hill' two years ago (in other words, the scene of a significant skateboarding slam by yours truly), and that the winner of this year's contest is South African surfer Royden Bryson.

I recall watching Bryson surf at a couple of Highland Opens - what a ripper. He's not so good at poker though. I seem to remember that he lost at least £3.80 over the course of a few post-surfing games of Texas Hold 'Em. I was on a losing streak, too, until the last game at Inverness Airport. There, in front of an astonished crowd of three men, a dog and a deep fried pizza, I emerged victorious, with all of £7.60 to show for it.

Of such triumphs, my friends, are nations made.

Rock smashing fun

The other day a friend phoned to ask how I'm faring lately.

"Alex!" she said, "How are you!!!? How's that view!!!!!???"

Steady on, said I. There is no need to be so exclamatory. Please start again.

"Er, OK?" she said. "Alex. How are you???"

Hang on, I replied. I didn't ask to be italicised. And the excessively interrogative tone of your words carries a hint of menance.

"OK!" she announced. "Alex... How are you..."

I cautioned that, in all the circumstances, and there were a lot of them, there was no need for points of suspension. Just cut to the quick.

"Right, I'm going to try again. Alex, how are you?"

Well, I said, I've been doing OK, remaining largely tolerant of the linguistic lacunae which so plague contemporary conversational discourse, but on Wednesday my GP told me I couldn't have any more of the nice orange pills. They're called Gabapentin and worked very well, thank you very much. Without them, a host of neurological problems have returned - a freezing cold, tingling face, a wonky left leg and ridiculous electric shocks in my left arm and hand.

"That doesn't sound good. But could anything else have prompted it?"

No, said I. Despite a recidivistic penchant for smashing up rocks, as pictured, I have accepted the wise words of the neurosurgeon's former PA, the excellent Judy, and long since abandoned my foray into the world of hard manual labour. Therefore, when all is said and done, and sometimes, remarkably enough, it is, I am mystified as to why all these symptoms have returned, not to mention a bit worried that the Gabapentin was masking them all along.

"Yes, that could be true," she said. "However, on behalf of everyone at the Beach restaurant at Sennen Cove - which, as you might recall from the days, but a few months ago, when you surfed there regularly, has a superlative vantage point from which one can observe the comings, the goings and the inbetweens of people down below - I would like to reassure you that your bald patch is as impressive as ever."

I prefer to call it a sunroof, I said, and then wondered: had my old friend Vicky, shown here with her daughter Imogen on a recent visit, noticed my thinning hair? Perhaps she had, and, even now, is chuckling at how time ages everyone, even a CAPITAL ACTION PERSON such as myself?

"I think that's very unlikely," said my telephonic friend. "But can I just ask - what happened to your Lyme disease? And what's this I hear about another problem which requires surgical intervention?"

Don't ask, I said. There are wigs out there for people like me, and I'm off to find one, though I should add that, after all the health mayhem of the past six months, I am stoked to be going to Lanzarote with the clan in early May.

"They have waves there, don't they?" asked my friend. "Won't you get very frustrated watching Harry surf them while you have to stand, or perhaps sit, or maybe even lie down, on the beach?"

Enough!! I am going to buy a wig and hide in it.

Yellow bracken found on quixotic quest in linen jacket

I have been away. With the Wade clan I found myself on the Wiltshire and Somerset borders, mindful not so much of Thomas Hardy but John Cowper Powys, a mad and uneven but highly readable writer whose novel Wolf Solent I would commend to anyone but especially those who like mad, uneven and yet strangely readable writers.

With Wolf Solent in mind, I set off for a stroll amid the umbrageous downs of Horningsham. Before I knew it, I found myself within the confines of Longleat estate, camel and rhino within shouting distance. A permissive footpath led me to them but once proximate I didn't shout. Oh no. Instead, I scrutinised them like a politically correct pioneering explorer, with no desire to shoot them but curious as to their thoughts and intentions.

Would they, for example, charge at me? Would they ferry me across a desert? Could they distinguish between diesel and petrol cars? Could they even see me? The question is not an idle one for, intent as I am to try and dress in a fashion which is in keeping with my age, fatness and position, I was wearing my rarely seen linen jacket. My friends, if they see me wearing this - a moot point because when clad in it I am, of course, camouflaged - describe it as my "English lecturer jacket". Why would I not be similarly invisible, and simultaneously erudite, to the wild beasts of Longleat?

Before long, my long, swooping strides took me to within an inch, or a few feet, or a couple of hundred yards, of the lions' enclosure. All this, without a penny being paid, thanks to the largesse of Lord Bath or perhaps an error by the footpath creators of Longleat and yet, freely, linenly roaming as I was, I drew back from gazing at the lions. It seemed to me, in linen as I was, that to encounter rhino and camel for free was one thing, but to gaze at lions was another. 

And so I found myself [Is the leitmotif of this post passivity, a la Don Quixote? Ed.] ambling back to Heaven's Gate, from which quite splendid views of Longleat and its environs are possible. However, before I could ascend its sculptured summit, I was waylaid by the kind of yellow bracken found in abundance in Wolf Solent. I'd never seen its like before, or, at least, not for a long time, and it was all I could do to keep my linen jacket in its rightful place, i.e., on my upper body.

Once back at my hotel, or, at least, the hotel in which myself and the clan had found ourselves, I reflected on how much weight I might have lost thanks to my few hours at large in Longleat. The answer, upon my return to the weighing machines of Cornwall, was none at all, and yet, as we drove into Penzance, it was clear from the clean lines at Danger Bay that the south coast had been working and now, as I consult the charts, it is apparent that there will be a wave at Sennen Cove tomorrow.

Needless to say, I won't be surfing it but I am confident that my ability to survive camel, rhino and lions wearing nothing but a linen jacket cannot but bode well for a return to surfing sometime in the summer. [Let's hope so. Otherwise you will find yourself not merely fat but without any readers. Ed.] Meantime, I will continue my quest for sartorial elegance. And weight loss. And sanity. 

Pictured: a dashing cove in a linen jacket. Commendably slim, he appears to have made an error to do with a rugby ball.