Good grief, he's done it. Yes, Sam Lamiroy, a man of many dreams and an occasional excess of facial hair, has gone and set up his oft-mooted Lamiroy Surf Academy. A glance at the website suggests that this is a mighty impressive venture, certainly a lot more likely to succeed than some of Sam's other schemes, which include (for the uninitiated) campaigning for a ban on Tony Plant ("the man is just too big - and he doesn't wear shoes"), asking for council funding to ensure that intermediate surfers are forced to watch this dancer ("how could they not improve? I ask you, come on, how? Just imagine a big screen on Perranporth beach showing this beautiful lady with her Pina Bausch moves. Every surfer present would go out and shred - but slickly, mind"), and devising a system whereby American and Australian professional surfers are ranked in accordance not with their prowess in the water but depending on their talent for speaking foreign languages ("it's only fair").
Hats off to Mr Lamiroy, who at last count spoke five foreign languages. He's a bright and likeable lad and I wish his Academy well.
Meanwhile, my own recent venture, Amazing Surfing Stories (a book), is wending its way through the publication process. My task over the next three days is to read the proofs; all things being equal, the book comes out towards the end of August. You can preorder a copy here and I can't think of a single thing that'd be more worth your while, except maybe checking out the wonderful Janelle Monae and learning how to groove as she and her compadres do.
(I would have liked to have been a good dancer. Sadly, my extraordinary clumsiness, which is rather like that of Watt in the eponymous novel, makes this a dream that not even Sam Lamiroy would have - and that's saying something.)
