Slide Mag

Ahh Poop...

We live in a bunch of damp little islands sat out in the Atlantic. We get a lot of weather. Which is why we love to talk about it so much. In sunnier climes, California for example, people don’t talk about the weather, as it’s sunny and nice most of the year. Doesn’t make for good small talk-“So it’s sunny, blue skies and not rained for weeks again.” ‘Yep, err, later dude...’We love to talk about the weather as we get more of it than most. Which is one of the reasons that being a surfer on our chunks of rock sitting off the edge of Europe is a good thing. As long as the weather is in a constant state of flux then we’ve got a shout at getting some waves. If a big summer high is sat out in the pond then we are knackered. Thankfully the Atlantic has been doing it’s impression of an agitated two-year old with sugar issues, it’s placid and sleepy before kicking off violently every now and then for a short spell before it slumbers again. Mid July it had one of those little glucose fuelled spaz attacks.

Ferry Good?

A surf mag once had a very wise cover line, it said, “If you surf, you will travel.” Six words that pretty much define us as a breed; be it cycling from your house to your local beach for a session, scoring a lift on a run up the coast to a better spot, driving to another country or the biggy- flying overseas for some proper foreign exploration. Surfing and travel go hand in hand. It’s what makes us as surfers better people, we’re open to other cultures, new ideas and can see passed the pub at the end of the road. Small town mentality and small-minded bigotry are not something we subscribe to. 

Travel is something we take for granted. In the modern age we can be anywhere in the world in a couple of days. If you have a big enough pile of gold nuggets at your disposal any wave anywhere is yours for the taking. The world is literally the small edible mollusc of your choice. Or at least it was…

Man-Flu I Hate You...

I thought I was gonna ride out the whole winter cold/flu free. I was eating good, exercising heaps, feeling top of the world. Even some long sessions in freezing water couldn't dent me. People with sniffles, snot and various plagues came and went and I charged on healthy as hell.
This week the weather finally turned as well, the coldest winter in 30-years flipped to pretty much early summer in a day. In my mind if the sun's out it ain't flu season anymore. 

Surfing’s Dark Secret… Scheiße ya!

My girlfriend read something I’d written on t’interweb the other day and reacted like a proper Daily Mail reading shocked of Tunbridge Wells- 

“You really piss in your wetsuit?” she exclaimed in horror. ‘Err, yes. Everyone does, what of it?’ I replied. 

“So you mean to tell me that even Kelly Slater pisses himself when he wears a wetsuit?” She -like most hot-blooded females I know- has a bit of a soft spot for The Bald One™ and whilst he may be the King he still needs a wee now and then; although as we all know he pisses excellence…

There Goes The No Claims Bonus...

Consider the scene- a balmy June day in Hossegor, the swells a fun three-foot, the wind a light zephyr of offshore and the morning sun is just taking the dawn chill out of the air nicely.  I’m down there shooting a bunch of micro-groms, who froth 24/7, but are particularly frothy this morning cos the shorebreak barrels at Caserne look super fun and –important when you are a 12 year old micro-grom- not too deathly or heavy. 

Ode to a Crook Neck...

There was a time, back in the day, when sleeping in your car was the done thing. 

We thought nothing of rocking down the Welsh coast for a surf, having a good session, then getting out near sun down before heading in to town to get fish’n’chips and a few tinnies for the evening. After the deep-fried fat-injection we’d truck back to the beach, watch the last wisps of the sun go down over a few cold ones and talk story.

Ixnay on the eBay…

The last thirty years have delivered some marvellous advances in the world we live in. Indeed for a child of the seventies like me it can all seem a bit baffling. Surfboards now come with three fins and a marvellous restraining device known as a ‘leash’. Mobile phones no longer come with a small suitcase you tow behind you full of batteries. The cassette walkman has mutated into the ultra loseable ipod which can hold many C90’s.

North Shore You Know The Score…

Fancy a trip to Hawaii for the big end of season Mick v Parko v The Wildcards v Pipe ding-dong? Well here’s some North Shore insider info that may help…

The End Is Nigh...

I’ve got a shocking admission for you- I like flying. There I’ve said it. I’m a dirty, dirrrty boy, a carbon raping, environment buggering, sea-level rise causing blaggard. Thing is I don’t care what the Global Warming Nazi’s think. Those planes will be flying anyway and it’s far more efficient for the seats to be filled than empty. A full plane is more efficient for moving the same amount of people than by other means (source: the same magic fact factory that has no factual accuracy- the interweb!) and it’s far cheaper to fly than by any supposed greener means.

Hot Tubs Or Death By Coconut?

Here’s a question for you- If you had the proverbial gun to your head (imagine a friendly but menacing 9mm Beretta) and had to choose to only ever go on surf trips to cold water destinations or warm water spots for ever more which way would you go? Which way does sir hang? Wetty or boardshorts? The loving confines of rubber or the freedom and potential ball rash of nylon?

Red Elvis On- Sweepers...

Join me if you will in welcoming a new acerbic voice to the Slide- Red Elvis...

There are very, very few people who look comfortable on a SUP. These people are generally very good surfers in the first place; people who can surf well in serious waves. These people also generally start off with a pleasant looking surfing style, and adopt this style somehow to their approach to SUP riding. But these people, as mentioned, are very few and far between. After Laird, there are probably less than a handful worldwide.

Surf Photographers- So Hot Right Now...

Surf photography is glamorous right? It’s all gratis exotic trips, large boxes of free gear from the surf companies DHL’d to your door and high-fiving your awfully handsome pro surfer friends in the channel as they come blasting out of yet another picture perfect barrel. Not to mention the free booze, endless supply of class A’s on the house and complimentary blow-jobs...

Loose Lips Give Surf Spots Crap Names...

Irish Teahupoo? Welsh Box? Coldwater Nias? Yorkshire G-land? Really?
These things invariably start in a surfing magazine- these wild assertions. They may start on the beach but they become concrete when they get committed to paper. Sometimes, people should just know when to press the delete key...
Joe Curren’s off the cuff remark that Thurso was ‘like a Coldwater Nias’ appeared in Surfer magazine several years ago, it was banter. It is now one of the most quoted phrases around, the guidebooks love it.

Unspoilt By Progress...

Surfing has changed a hell of a lot in the last few years. Time was if you wanted to learn to surf you bought yourself a yellowed old clunker of a board and you set about the time honoured ritual of trial and error that is learning the sport of kings. You did it by yourself without instructors and ten other lycra wearing gibbons.

I Can See Through Time!

Would you let strange people put weird chemicals in your system for cash?
It’s a simple question that most right thinking people would answer with a plain ‘No!’ The irony that a good chunk of those self-same right thinking people snort and neck unknown chemicals every weekend and pay handsomely for the privilege tickles me a lot…
Being a human guinea pig is not really an attractive proposition for most folk. They prefer their immune system untampered, their urine unsampled and their blood unextracted. There are however people that in occasions of dire need or times of ‘I fancy going travelling for six months and need to make a fast buck without resorting to being a drug mule for the Columbians’ do take up the option of being a global drug companies bitch toy.

Indo's Gonna Git Ya...

If things are gonna go tits up it’s always ten times worse when they do so in Indo. This is probably why Indonesia is the No1 destination for surfers. It’s nothing to do with the sublime quality of the waves, the legendary consistency of the perfectly groomed swells that have marched thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean for your pleasure, the great climate and the cheap as chips cost of living. Nah. It is purely cos shit goes down, and when shit goes down in Indo shit gets real. Enough ghetto speak for now but you get my gist. The old Chinese proverb, or threat as it really is- ‘may you live in interesting times’ could not apply better.

Getting Cornholed...

Surf trips don’t always work out for the best. You don’t always get waves, the weather can be crap, your accommodation can burn down and there’s the inevitable rolling of the rental car into some poor sods house when you drive back from the local fleshpot smashed out of your mind... We’ve all done that.
Some trips go good, some go bad and some end up with you face down unconscious with your hands gaffa taped to the side of your head; whilst half a bottle of Jack does it best to melt your brain into liquid snot. These things happen, they’re unavoidable.

Eagle Birdie Bogeys...

I have a frank and horrifying admission to make- two summers back I started playing golf. Lord knows why, as I’ve spent a lifetime sneering at the ‘sport’ I deemed to be the exclusive domain of fat, arrogant, racist, misogynistic dudes with the fashion sense of stylistically-challenged, gay-amoebas. I use to enjoy honking my horn when driving past golf courses. Golfers were idiots; they were old, past it and had obviously given up on life. They were welcome to their little Nazi enclave, the golf clubs that didn’t even allow women on the course, let alone in the club-house, their bizarre game following a little white ball around with a bag full of golf sticks they were too weak to even carry, jeez they even removed the one healthy element- the actual going for a walk bit- by driving overgrown invalid wagons.

The Poo Bus...

 Chile, sometime around the turn of the millennium, I’d gone out there with Jarvi to travel around for a few months and see what we could find in the way of surf. We’d found some epic waves with no one around but us and the ragtag crew we’d assembled. After a good month exploring the wondrous sand point breaks of south central Chile by 4x4 I needed to head North, the mysto reefs of Iquique and Arica beckoned. I wanted to see the desert- the Atacama, the driest place on earth and the heaving reefs of the isolated desert outpost towns.

The Fix...

It’s one of those nondescript community buildings, a once proud edifice now run at minimal cost by the council, decorated in cheerless shades of grey and beige, a feint whiff of floor cleaner mixed with cheap coffee gives it that spooky, public building smell, overly jolly day-glo posters for the WI add the only dash of colour. Upstairs in a random room a group is meeting. The hastily handwritten sign on the door has the simple inscription: G.A. 7.00p.m. Free Coffee.