The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

Six members of the Dawn Crew were sitting peacefully and companionably on their boards, bobbing up and down gently with the rise and fall of the small swell that was managing to stumble into The Bay. The year had given up all pretence of being emotionally attached to summertime and warm weather, and had embraced wintertime with a passion. While the water was still nice and warm, really, the prevailing sou’westerly of the cold and dry season of the region was making short shrift of any illusions of lingering warmth, and full length wetsuits had finally been adopted by all except the most dangerously insane. A trade-off of losing the warmth of the sun was also, simultaneously, losing much of the maddening holiday-making crowd and the never-ending hustle and bustle of too many people trying to get on too few waves at the same time. With wintertime and the cold weather had come peace and quiet, and the Crew Members were relishing it. The sun stuck its nose over the edge of the horiz...

I know a bloke.   His name is Phil. Phil’s a good bloke. Phil’s also a cockroach. One of the hardy species that will survive the approaching nuclear holocaust, and will dance on humanity’s ashes and bones when the fallout dust clears. The eventual and ultimate winner of Darwin’s Race Of Natural Selection. Ready set go, humans make it to the 21 st century more or less in one piece, then vote for some unaccountable psychopath one time too many and it’s boom and the mushroom cloud. Like the old song says “boom goes London, boom Paris, more room for you more room for me”. Last ones standing will be Phil and his mates, rubbing their scaly forelegs in glee at the prospect of ruling the radioactive desert that will be all that’s left of planet Earth. Phil is an enterprising fella. He used to live under the fridge at the house of a mate of mine, with his five thousand brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, nieces, nephews, and unacknowledged illegitimate kids. He gets around. B...

As is well known, the world is broadly divided into two distinct classes of people: a tiny minority of widely shunned mentally unstable people who love bagpipes; and the entire rest of the world. Among those poor misguided creatures who love the pipes a special Hell is set aside for those who actually play them themselves and willy-nilly, deliberately and with malicious predetermination and intent go out of their way to inflict them on other people. I am One Of Those. We moved to the place where we now live on a wing and An Unhealthy Amount Of Wishful Thinking. We had no money, zero prospects, and no work of any description to go to. On the other hand, food and shelter had to be provided for two adults, two growing kids and a wildly fluctuating number of guinea pigs. So we pulled out all stops and worked at anything and everything that presented itself. For myself personally that meant, in addition to guiding wildlife spotting kayak tours on the bay, freelance outdoor e...