Sheer Arse Luck

It was a fine morning on the water. The wet season was just about setting in, with a range of drizzle, showers, storms and cyclones that had all shown the good sense and grace of not turning up on this day.

   We bobbed around on the water amicably. The swell was small, not to say minor, the hour was early, and the crowds were absent, presumably because they had turned up at our break, contemplated the spectacle of five people floating around on dead flat water, and had decided there were better ways to spend their morning, such as going back to bed.

   We didn’t mind. Less is more, when it comes to crowds. Especially when there’s not a lot of waves to go around. It was hard going catching any wave at all, and whenever an asthmatic and arthritic ripple showed the tiniest degree of inclination of standing up and forming into a world class never-ending straight roller of a wave we scrambled frantically to get onto it. Due to the extremely minor size of the swell we sat hard up close to our favourite rock, where any bit of water ambling into the bay at a pace so leisurely it could almost be described as dead would run into it and feel morally obliged to make an effort and at least make some sort of an attempt at being surfable. It’s Rule Three of the International Code Of Water Behaviour. We take this very seriously and have often had long and heated arguments with bits of water that incomprehensibly failed to live up to these exacting standards.

   The way it works is that the water sloshes in, smashes up against the rock, slushes away from it again in refraction, gushes to and fro a bit seemingly without direction, and then rushes into a vertical umbrella, often containing a sizeable amount of yellow sand on account of being so close to the land. A lot of the time, depending on the tide, right in front of it there will be a choice collection of sharp and abrasive rocks lined up for our exclusive enjoyment, all happily poking out of the water, leering at us while winking and saying ‘come on motherfuckers, we’re gonna rip yous to shreds’. It’s generally known as Dry Gully. On a low tide there’s about five centimtres of water there, but if you’re desperate enough you can crawl into the hole under the rock, seize the umbrella water by the short and curlies, and use the momentum it gains from bouncing off the rock to catapult you forwards and onto a wavelet which would otherwise be near-impossible to get on.

   This day it was like that. We were taking it turns as always, because it’s the nice way to go about it, and everyone gets a go. Inevitably sooner or later people turn up who are not familiar with the concept of sharing and taking turns, and who, more often than not, subscribe to the life philosophy of Me First And Fuck You, and then usually things get a lot less nice, occasionally turning nasty. Most of the time that’s when we get out, although at memorable times there have been altercations which always, without fail, leave us feeling empty, soiled and disappointed, instead of elated and over the moon, like we normally do after a session of catching waves.

   A wave turned up and it was the turn of one of our mates, a character called Snow White, on account of the gleaming shining blackness of his African skin. Now, like myself, Snow White is reasonably new to the game of surfing, and, like myself, is still somewhere on the long uphill slope of coming to terms with learning the millions of different things that all need to be lined up and executed at exactly the right time in exactly the right way in order to catch a wave, or else you eat sand. So the wave turned up in front of us, yawning and gaping, and he spun around and started paddling his hardest, water splashing everywhere, foam flying wildly and erratically high overhead, knocking out passing seagulls and sending them crash-landing into the ocean. With one last superhuman effort of his arms, a grunt that tore his larynx and a fart that contributed just that little bit more wetness to the sea he pulled out in front and into the wave and dissappeared behind a flying crest of white bubbles. I sat and watched, as another one of our mates pulled up next to me, and I stared intently down that barrel of froth. Would he make it?

   The wave rolled on and on, and still no sight of Snow White emerging from the unplumbed depths of Davey Jones’ Locker. Then, very slowly, as in slow motion, something black and shiny began to rise above the line of the running wave. A curvature, first small, then growing bigger and bigger and blacker and rounder, until, finally at long last, there rising out above the line of retreating water, round and bright as the sun or the moon rising above the horizon, was what was unmistakably his arse, sticking out high and mighty above the water.

   I almost choked, and laughed and laughed and laughed, as, very slowly, the arse descended again, disappeared from view, and was then replaced by a thing of exactly the same shape and colour, but significantly smaller. It rose above the crest of the wave in its turn, pointing up to the sky, and it became clear that it was, in fact, his head this time. He had made it, had gotten to his feet and was now spinning off down the line, reaping the well-deserved reward of riding the wave after all the hard work of trying to get on it. Good on him. Unfortunately, not far down the line he must have hit a speed bump, or possibly the head of s small child playing in the water, because unaccountably he wobbled left, wobbled right, wobbled in the middle and disappeared arse over tit into the brine. As he vanished from sight we had the opportunity to observe why his other nickname is The Space Shuttle, as his board was catapulted straight into the air, travelled three metres, the length of his legrope, and, unfortunately failing to put itself into orbit around Mars, crash landed into the water, crushing the skull of a loggerhead turtle just poking his head out for a stickybeak and decapitating a pregnant mother with triplet toddlers.

   I rolled around my board seized with hysterical fits of laughter. There’s nothing quite as funny as other people’s misfortune.

   Next it was my turn, so I picked myself up by the scruff of my neck, eyeballed the next wave and started paddling like a madman. I hugged the rock so close it smiled coyly and gave me its phonenumber, then with a swoosh and a swish slid into what I thought was the right place, only to find out that, in actual point of fact, I was right on the cusp of the edge between the bubbling white water and the languid welcoming green water. Clearly, what goes around comes around, I was going to get swiped sideways over the top of the wave, a thing called “going over the falls”, and give everyone else a jolly good laugh at my expense as I went head first into the drink, arms and legs going everywhere and nowhere, like an echidna on a bad hair day.

   But I’ve been trying to do this for a while now, I’ve been watching other people intently, studying their moves, techniques and approaches, an’ I bin practisin’, ey. So at the very last possible minute, and without anything even remotely resembling a conscious thought traversing the vast, draughty and empty echo-chamber of what passes for my brain, I leaned to the right side just like that, and with my left hand grabbed the rail of my board and reefed it, lifting it up and tilting it sideways, not too much, just the right amount, and I slid sideways with the wild white water lapping at my heels and jumped to my feet on the long luscious carpet of green of the wave stretching out in front of me. I made it, against all reasonable expectation.

   So I stood up and bent forwards to dodge the wind, and shuffled my feet a bit, and bobbed up and down with the movement of the board beneath me, and shot down the face of that wave, which, completely unexpectedly, suddenly changed its mind, thought better of being a lacklustre listless bit of nothing-water, and curled up, reforming into a beautiful little shoulder–high wall as it hit the hidden sandbanks under the water in the mid-section of the bay.

   Then something happened that’s never happened before.

   In the almost four years of devoting myself to learning the arcane black magic art of surfing, of dancing on the ocean, of standing still while the world of water shifts beneath and around me a hundred miles per hour, I have looked and gazed and stared and observed and soaked up every little bit of visual clue that has presented itself to me. I have peered with an intensity nothing short of unhealthy obsession at the green wall next to me as I fly alongside of it, looking for the right place to go, the best move to make, the appropriate position to adopt to make the most of the momentum of the wave and go as fast and well as possible; I have kept one eye over my shoulder, gauging my distance from the whitewash and the advisability of cutting back into it to stay closer to the curl, to the source of energy and power of the wave, and reacted when deemed necessary; I have taken the time to peak down into the water below my feet, to admire the colours of the sandy bottom of the ocean and the various things that sit there and watch me fly past over the top of their heads, such as fish, turtles, dolphins and sharks, and have kept a close eye on whatever rocks might find it funny to pop out in front of me and slice me and my board open lengthways. But in all that time I have never, not once, looked back.

   I looked back.

   And I saw the most beautiful thing imaginable. There behind me was a slope of moving, roiling, boiling water. There, under my feet, was the tail of my board, with a trail of white bubbles spilling away from underneath it. And it seemed to move at a different speed and in a different dimension than the front of the board. I gaped at it, slack-jawed. Was this the twilight zone? Was sleep deprivation finally kicking in and causing halucinations? A few too many no-sleep nights and being on the water when the rest of the world is sensibly asleep in their hopefully dry beds? I looked back to the front. Whoosh! The breeze blew in my face, going whirr-whirr-whir—rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb around my ears. The board was flying along the face of the wave as usual, giving every impression of speed and movement. I looked back again. Behind me the water rose slowly and majestically, pearly green and blue and white, cut-through and marbled with rising lines of bubbles, like a line of oxygen rising in an aquarium, or above a scuba diver. I stared into the depthless void of the shining slope behind me, and lost myself in a vacuum of time and space, for a few seconds.

   Turned back to the front, whoosh! flying fast.

   Turned back to the back, slow, slow motion gliding.

   It was unbelievable.

   I rode that wave out until the very end, and tumbled off my board into the warm water of the sea, a huge smile on my face. There is nothing more beautiful.

   I turned around and paddled back up again, my head giddy and reeling, with only one thought in my mind: the need to see that again. Get another fix, and another one after that. Over and over and over again.