The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

  There had been a cyclone somewhere far away, roaring ferociously over the wide expanse of the ocean, and it had whipped the water into a wild frenzy. The long-range groundswell had brought it over to us, and now all around us the water was boiling and churning, roiling and rolling to and fro between the open gap of the bay, and the claustrophobically close cliffs of our take-off zone. The water swirled and bubbled in dirty streaks of brown, and a case could well be made that, really, we shouldn’t be out here at all.    But that was never going to happen. Surfing is a pursuit of an opportunistic nature. When the swell is there, you’ve got to seize the opportunity and jump on it as hard and fast as you can, because there is no way of telling how long it will last, or when it will be turned on again by the Great Big Wind In The Sky, patron saint of surfers and people who like to eat a lot of baked beans.    So we bent our backs into the howling wind, put our ...

Baboons are interesting animals. They are best known for having huge pink arses, shitting in their hands and throwing it at people they don’t like, and dragging their knuckles over the ground while they walk. They have occasionally been known for their penchant for exhibitionist sex. Most bafflingly among their many intriguing attributes is their uncanny ability to be able to learn how to read, that is recognise words and distinguish them from others. They share this ability with humans, and, curiously, Columbian pigeons. It is unclear whether a diet of cocaine was involved in the development of the ability in the latter. Words baboons have in the past been proven to be able to recognise include the words “surf”, “wave”, “swell”, “drop-in” and “you bastard”. Under test conditions they have been shown to be able to acquire a vocabulary of up to 308 words, the vast majority of them swear words.    One ability baboons are emphatically not renowned for being able to master is th...

  The roaring, bone-crushing surf of the last few days and weeks had faded into a distant memory, or, some might suggest, a figment of our imagination.    We stood gloomily under the stars and stared out at the black water lapping sedately at the beach. Tiny ripples fanned out towards the night sky horizon.    ‘Right. We’re stuffed for a wave,’ said the Reefshark.    ‘Nah, look at it, look, there’s a set coming through right now,’ said I, the Baboon, enthusiastically, pointing at the water in front of us with one hand while resting the knuckles of the other one on the sand.    Three heads turned, very slowly, to the right. Even more slowly they swivelled back around to the left. A tiny crest of bubbling white water shimmered in the night, spluttered anaemically like an old two-stroke lawn mower on stale fuel, and laid down and died. Three heads turned back towards me.    ‘So ... you sure there’s nothing wrong with your vis...