So, They Say that Bad things Happen in Threes.

The First Incident.

The week that is presently winding itself down in preparation for the commencement of another (when i say week here, i feel i should state at this juncture that i do not mean week in the uniform Monday - Sunday orientation of its being, or for that matter the more traditionalist idealism of the Sunday - Saturday week that many of the steadfastly religious of you out there may adhere to, but rather just a grouping of days that may or may not have been 7 in number but felt as if they were treacherously long enough in duration to be classified as at least a week if not more. I don't know, it was one of those periods in time where it all seemed to blend together into some horrific sequence of events that can be categorised with the words "it's just been one of those weeks!", i feel you now understand where this post may be leading.) Any way, i digress, the week that has just finished started out to be the same as any other. I woke up on er...., for the sake of argument we will call it Oneday, by my alarm at 7 am, reset it and woke up at 7.30am, reset it once more and was rudely awakened once again by the mechanical squawking of my alarm at 7.50am. (To those of you out there mentally criticising my idle attitude and lethargy, I'm good at sleeping therefore i embrace it.) I finally rose from my pit and ventured to the shower, before descending to breakfast where i ate my fill and then scurried off to work. The beginning of a day comparable to that of millions of other drones out there who work seemingly endlessly to earn just enough to see them through month to month in this financially driven mire of reality we are all forced to exist in. The day continued in its mediocrity up until the early evening where, despite the over averageness of the waves in the Bay, i dearly required a surf to cleanse the commercialism from off of me and send me into that wondrous calm, that state of pure zen that only surfers understand. The session was going surprisingly well, my resemblance to the Cheshire Cat was growing exponentially, i had decided that i would catch this next wave and then call it a night. I surfed the final wave into the grom water and touched my feet to the current contorted sea bed beneath me. "Ohhh FFFFFF! That was a damn sharp stone" i thought to myself. Just as i reached the beach searing pain emanating from my heel shot up and down my calf rendering the majority of my left leg thoroughly useless. "Bloody Sodding Crap!". Yep i had been tagged by the mysterious sand bar dwelling monster, the Ernst Stavros Blofeld of all surfers, the Weaver Fish. As i hobbled along the low tide stretch of Great Western and into Towan, up the stairs and onto Killacourt i could feel my leg becoming more and more useless. I made it home, which luckily for me is a few seconds walk away from Killacourt and managed to, just about stretch my wetsuit over the now considerably more swollen, mildly misshapen and undoubtedly more colourful club like object which was now located where my foot used to be found. Now everyone knows the next bit, "submerse infected area in water that is as hot as the patient can handle", so with intentions to surf again as soon as possible, and due to the fact that i, with terrifying coincidence, flicked the TV on to a program about amputations where a distinguished looking carver was about to render someone 'unipedal', i sourced my unassuming black bucket from its ever-ready location under my bed and boiled the kettle and poured kettle full after kettle full of boiling water into my super special black rescue vessel (which subsequently doubles as a window cleaning bucket) and plonged my foot into the Vesuvius like heated water in some form of 'kill or cure' style. Instant regret came in the form of the most shamefully pathetic, whilst equally blood curdling yelp. So now i didn't know what to do, was my foot hurting because of the sting or because of the hot water??? I bravely and gingerly put my foot back into the water (after putting a couple of litres of cold water in there) and held out in the water for the next 45 minutes. I have to say, that after the mind boggling pain of the string coupled with the water temperature my foot felt a great deal better, and thankfully looked like a foot again, granted i was a tad rock 'n' roll for a while, and by that i mean i was walking around the the freakish love child of Mick Jagger and the dodgy Iggy Pop puppet from off the Swift Cover adverts, due to a terminal limpness in my leg but other then that i was fine. No amputations needed.


The Second Occurrence


The next little pebble of disaster to occur and send the few days so far into the definite realm the 'one of those days' boulder rolling freely down the hill with nothing stopping it, happened the next day i went out surfing. This wasn't the very next day of course, my foot still hurt, and i had a little reaction from the sting which meant nausea and vomiting was occurring with unerring frequency, i think i went out a couple of days after the first painful event, so without putting to much analysis on it, i will call it Fourday. Fourday started like Oneday, immeasurable dull, overcast, boring, but hey, look on the bright side, not to worry, surfing will put payed to all the rainy day woes! Or so i thought. I stood on the beach in my suit looking out past the evening surf at Towan and the weight of the world evaporated from my shoulders. All the pain in my foot? Gone. Will i have enough money for rent? Gone. Should it look like that? Errrrrr? Anyway, needless to say surfing for me is an escape from everything. So i waded into the shallows hoped on my mal and paddled out into the 1ft clean faces that intermittently rolled into the bay. I was having a great session, picking the right waves, making the sections and most of all having a great time. I am an avid advocate of all forms of surfing, a wave is not a wave for one specific discipline, Mike Stewart open most peoples eyes to this by body surfing pretty much every reef at pipe and taking off deeper then most stand up surfers dare. So when i saw a few stand up paddle surfers making their way towards me i had no reason not to welcome them to the peak, especially seeing as one of them was my boss and the other his protege and friend of mine, who we will call ‘Surf Menace’ so that my readership doesn’t go hunting for him. So the Surf Menace and i, chatted and bantered between sets and exchanged waves during them, when, suddenly out of nowhere one of those sneaker sets slunk through into Towan and began to jack and feather running from the harbour to the island on the falling tide, i saw the Surf Menace begin to tack to what i thought was a motion to head out back and out of the breaking zone of this wave, so i began the long smooth strides that characterize the start of my paddle stroke i felt the board tilt and begin to accelerate, i flicked my heels to my back and increased the speed of my stroke. The wave became vertical and i popped to my feet. Just as i was about to make my bottom turn, set my trim and make for the face down the line i heard a clunk, felt my board shudder and leave the connection with my feet, i hit the water and got turned over in the washer. What happened? Did i hit a seal, or a grom? I stand in the shallows and blink the water from my eyes, standing looking bemused just yards away from me was the Surf Menace chuckling, and saying “probably not the best idea going for that wave!”, i had to agree, and then i realised, the clunk, ohhh! Surf Menace went for the wave, we collided, my board! I turned to look at my board floating upended in the water, it didn’t take me long to notice the big SUP nose shaped hole now residing in the side of my precious battle scared mal, my heart sank. I have dinged my board before, of course who hasn’t, but nothing this substantial. I had been in the water for only about 20 minutes and now i was heading back up the stairs towards Killacourt with a forlorn look on my face and a spirit as dented and cracked as my board.


The Third and (Hopefully) Final Thing


This third thing which set the cap fast on my shocker of a week happened just the other day, I'm pretty certain that it was the 5th day in the week, so to go with trend of the other days i shall call this day Fiveday. The bad thing that occurred on Fiveday happened early on, and set the tone for the whole day, it was just as i got to work and my boss was there, politely and cautiously greeting my boss with a bright “hello”, i suddenly realised from the look on my boss’ face that this was no happy, friendly ‘how are you doing’ sort of visit. “The situation is dyer” my boss says, “if the business doesn’t start making more money, we cant afford to keep paying you”. “Great!”, i say to myself. On top of all the other stuff going on in my life at the moment i now have the employment sword of Damocles hanging just north of my cranium. I work in a position just outside the town, i rely on passing trade in and out of the town. When your business is in a geographical situation such as mine it is exceedingly difficult to increase your customer base, given that i can only get as many customers as those who are willing to stop at my shop, and given that i solely sell/rent equipment and items designed primarily for tourists to use at the beach the weather owns my store. If i could hire someone to either stand in the middle of the Trevemper Road with a big sign forcibly diverting cars in to my forecourt, or actually divert the roads so that ‘all roads lead to Waveworx’ i would, but I'm fairly sure i would break several labour, society and public order laws. Thankfully there were some waves to be had that night (albeit on my shortboard) which meant that i didn’t instantly freak out and cut and run, this revelation has caused great concern and desperation on my part though, i have spent most of the rest of my week praying for grockles!


So that was my week, and they say that bad thing happen in threes, so hopefully that was my quota of bad dues paid, the only thing is that they don’t say what the time limit is for these bad things happening, i hope bad things don’t start happening all over again, i would appreciate a visit from the good luck duck please.

Sir, I Do Believe That I Am An Arsehole... And I Love It

     Last night, I was overcome by a severe bout of turmoil, worry and deep restlessness. As with most things in my collaborative collection of catastrophes and calamitous coincidence called life, the remedy to such a harrowing situation is surf! Given that the hour was freely past the yard arm and the sun had been duly swallowed by the gaping ocean the actually participation of 'jazzing the glass' was out of the question. So i merely rambled to to Killacourt to sit and allow the ghostly roar of sets of swell dying on the shore sooth my soul, when, to my disgust and horror, i was greeted by an amassed horde of underage teenagers, drinking alcohol (that is if Lambrini passes for an alcoholic beverage nowadays), smoking, copulating and of course the latest phase for the newly pubescent out there, flirting with cliff edges. During a few moments of observation and analysis, this breed of 'human' do not actually speak on any pitch or resonance aurally attainable to that of civilised beings, in fact the hullabaloo emanating from the bunch of cretins was comparable to a large flock of seagulls. Well i was never going to be able to elevate to mood of my spirit in this atmosphere, and then when one of the gremlins arrived riding a trolley and then proceeded to try and throw it like a Frisbee to compatriot of his and then deciding to discard the shopping cart upended by a set of stairs running to the beach, i could not take any more. Had i not taken action from this point things would have, no doubt escalated until the trolley would have ended up in the ocean not only becoming one of the millions of articles of pollution in the oceans, but also being a hazard for myself and other surfers, on which i am sure i would have broken my leg on, or worse broken my board on!!!!! No no no i cant be having that. In all our lives there are moments which make them selves available for us to grasp that set us apart from the ordinary masses, am i a hero? No I'm just a normal guy trying to make his way in the world.

     Whilst resolving this situation that was developing before me i inadvertently created a game. Basically this is what you do. Head to an open area, park, car park, beach etc where a large group of obviously underage citizens are imbibing alcohol, obstructing public order restrictions and generally doing various other illegal activities. Then call the police and report the disturbance, once reported wait around until the police arrive. This takes up to an hour according the the emergency services switchboard, but yesterday the beat were very efficient and arrived within 15 minutes. Once the police arrive and become visible to all the ruffians, miscreants and harbour rats in the area watch them flee in the idea of the horror of their parents finding out. Finally sit back, relax in the uninterrupted of the sounds of the ocean.

     I know what people will say to this, "oh Rich that's so harsh", "You were 16 once too Rich" etcetera, etcetera, but i don't care, because i had a fantastic, relaxing night sleep last night.


I thank you.

Doodlings.

Good morrow to the all dear fellows who peruse my blog.

Here are a small helping of my latest sketches. If they appeal to you, i implore that you please comment.

Herring Gull

Oystercatcher

Common Redshank

Ehhhh A Dead Shrew! Bad Omen???

     So, upon facing the metallic blue portal that signifies yet another day of labour for the man this morning, i observed that there was a Shrew, undoubtedly the wrong way up, laying by my feet. "What happenstance brought this rather dapper rodent (in my opinion the Shrew has to be one of the most formally suited members of the animal kingdom, and hence a true wally of the rodent world) to such an ignominious demise"? I pondered to myself. Perhaps it was merely theatrically deceased, after all, i will have descended on it with some rapidity on my bicyclette, yes that's it, it is purely discombobulated into presuming me to be some bear like creature, i perused the unerringly still, tiny mammal with greater diligence............. Nope, definitely dead! OK, so why? Is this some deep Kernow ancient voodoo of nameless origin? Or is there an exceptionally affectionate and romantic Raptor skirting the thermals out there with a penchant for surf shop managers, leaving me gifts? As awesomely radical as these theories are, i somehow find them unlikely, although I'm pretty sure i spied a Buzzard making kissy faces at me the other day, but that's another story!

     Well in the mind that the potential for voodoo was too strong to ignore and it was giving me the hebejebeez, i decided to give the little shrew a Viking burial in order to ward of any evil spirits, demons and, or knockers that may well have been summoned. So utilizing my ability to pack away dozens of magnums, i horded a trove of lolly sticks made a raft/pyre set it aflame and sailed my little furry brother down the Gannel to the next life!

God speed Shrew, God speed!

Doing the important things in life.

Peace hep cats!




My personage as been strumming to the beat of surf and sketch.



The more than ever so slightly baggy constraints of my enforced occupation to the man, means that my sketching hours has increased significantly. Recently, the focus as to my analysis of the practice of the illustrious art of illustration, has been upon the coastal avian fauna, ubiquitous or otherwise, to the peninsula on which i now reside know as, to utilise some Kernewek, Kernow. Examples of my craft to follow in due course.



However and otherwise by and by, time has also been soulfully invested into the theory, method, act and joyful passion of sliding free along beautifully peculiar shaped articles of water, skirting betwixt the sheets of corduroy and casting the fickle folds of white wash asunder, before the short lived momentum of the watery hump dies away and my experience of Newton’s Laws of Motion subsides to hear Pythagoras wickedly scream “eureka” as I play witness to the completion of a epic voyage which has origins in oceans of fathomless volume, i count my being as one which is has countless fortune to be privy to a thing so primal, unique and faultless.

Now Residing in Newquay and Back Up and Running.

Ok, so i know that this post is probably going out to all of 0.00 people as it has been months since i last posted anything, and in the opinion of a few people it’s been even longer since i posted anything of any merit, but all that it’s about to change!




I have now moved from my dismal land locked wallowing mausoleum of the aptly named Gravesend in Kent and have now moved to the all together much wavier Newquay. While i am here, which (employment dependent) will be a very long time, I plan on posting my observations, quips, prose and musings of the town, the surf, the lifestyle, everything.



I hope, whoever you are, you enjoy it!