The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

  Madam Tussaud’s Major Contribution To The World   I stood in the carpark at my local break and diligently devoted myself to the all-important task of applying sunscreen to every single exposed and discernible surface of skin sticking out anywhere outside of my rashie and my boardies. The Golden Hour, that period of time when the tide is coming in and bringing along with it the vital push that makes the waves here break and turns them into rideable entities, fell in the middle of the day. While it is an absolute luxury and a pleasure to be able to surf during the day, under blue skies and in sunshine, and without crowds to boot, one minor drawback of surfing in the tropics is that, if you do so, the beautiful blue sky and sunshine will roast you to within an inch of your life.    So with great care I covered myself in sunscreen. I painted my face a ghostly white with zinc cream, paying particular attention to filling up my ears, nostrils, mouth, and, of course...

In The Beginning Everything Was Frozen.    It gleamed pale green and blue in the dark, with greyish overtones. Clouds of cold air slowly wafted from it.    ‘What’s all this then?’ came a voice out of the darkness. It was met with an elaborate though invisible shrug. ‘Dunno. Something frozen, looks like.’ A shape moved closer to the big lump of Frozen Thing. A dark shape against a darker background. The place wasn’t big on lighting. A forward-poking motion suggested a nose being stuck out in front, to have a better look, because, as is well known, the nose is the paramount organ for vision.    ‘What’s it smell like?’ asked the second voice.    ‘Hmmpf,’ sniffed the first voice. ‘It smells like Cold, if you ask me.’    ‘Right,’ said the second voice. ‘Fancy that. Who would’ve thought.’    ‘Yeah ...’ There was a sensation of a sideways glare from Voice 1 to Voice 2. ‘Fancy that.’    ‘Anyway,’ said Voice ...

I slid down a steep run at high speed, and stopped in a shower of snow, turning back towards the slope to watch Kiana cruise down. At the same time, from the end-station of a chairlift just near by, a young girl unloaded from the chair by herself, skied down about 5 metres, and wiped out in an impressive stack, losing a ski and wrapping her legs around herself in ways you wouldn't think possible without breaking a couple of femurs and severely straining a good few arteries. Kiana flew past in a whirl of snowflakes and dead chickens, and pulled up 10 metres down the slope. I stopped and looked at the girl, assessing whether she needed help or not. She crawled this way for a bit, then crab-scrabbled the other way, then sat down and gave up on life. I figured she needed help. So I chook-footed back up to where she was and set about helping her get to her feet. We got to her lost ski at the same time, so I smiled encouragingly at her while she scrambled to get her hands on ...

  Rosmerta leaned back into the shade of the eaves of he house next to her, and stared at the spectacle in front of her. A collection of some of the most stiff-headed blokes from her village were performing what they charitably though of as a dance. They’d lit a fire in the middle of the central area of the village, and were now jumping around it in a revolving circle. Sacrapos, the bard, was standing off to one side, blowing hard on his bagpipes, cheeks bulging, head bright red, eyes almost popping out of his head. To the wailing coming out of the thing the blokes moving around the fire alternatively threw their arms into the air, kicked ferociously back with their feet like a bucking horse, stamped down hard on the ground, and let out a loud “hey” everytime they pounded the ground. She strongly suspected the real reason for the shouts was the pain they got from hitting the hard ground with their soft feet, if the undertones of agony she thought she could ddiscern beneath the din ...