a dark few days

its been a tough few days, my buddy ed left these shores, a few surf sessions tucked under his belt and many a frozen memory locked away in my mind. Good times and great waves.

It leaves me bereaved again, a strong work, but the only adjective that accurately captures the bleakness of having your longest, truest friend spend that kind of intense time with you, to be ripped asunder. He leaves a void that never gets properly filled.

To make do, I shaped myself a new board...B13, to commemorate some good times. I listened to moseley shoals, and old blues records, and the thievery corperation whilst I shaped and glassed. Its not the neatest of works, but im happy with it, its rough around the edges glassing wise, which is kind of how i felt whilst i made it. I reckon it'll go good.

wishes

i wish i could shake this odd feeling...it ephemeral - impossible to define today, articulation is just out of m grasp - but its unsettling me

also, much more pressing...i wish i took this picture...

how awesome is this
Photograph by Mark Tipple

warm beer

only an expat knows the feeling....

its hard being away from home, both of my homes - but in the spirit of truly attempting to remain present in the moment, experiencing life as it happens, ive allowed a whole host of wanted and unwanted emotions to bubble away since being here - driving along old streets, memories, reminders of my past - acutely reminds me of the hardest thing in being away from home, cues.

As you walk about the town/village/city/country from where you hail, tiny, minute cues trigger conscious and unconscious memories, some of which you dwell upon, others you dismiss - but this is a constant, always happening on some level. Moving away from your country, those cues vanish, its hard to define, like capturing smoke, but this is the thing that's the hardest - your past relies solely in your conscious recall.

Now not, right now, sitting in the conservatory of mums house, listening to wood pigeons, and starlings tweet and chirp, memories are stirred of childhood, tree-houses, wood fires, hay baling, long hot drives to crammed coastal towns annually. and every day so far, the same - so i'm sucking it all in, storing it away, remembering so i can later remember.

and...beer gardens...i've traveled wide and far through my life, but nothing beats a English beer garden in unseasonably warm spring afternoon sunshine...

life and death

a mornings walk, the spring is springing here -

 life

death

my friend ed

i miss ed ~ tonight, acutely. I'm homesick, painfully. its happening more, feeling more and more lonely, missing home, the closer i get to going back.

He's the guy I first surfed with, the guy I shared the first few steps of the journey with. He gets me.

He surfs good, because he enjoys it, its visceral, its written on his face, he'll do whatever madcap scheme i had conjured up, we surfed at midnight, tangled in the fisherman's lines, we surfed waves we shouldn't.

When i surf i sometimes think of him ~ and try to tell myself to be a little more like him than me.
Moments like now, when i think about my place in the world ~ i miss him most.
I miss sitting on the roof of the car, post surf, in the dewy evening sharing stories, usually tall ones, exaggerating rides, overstating ourselves, knowing that we were(are) both rubbish! - smiling, knowing, and laughing.

We climbed big cliffs together ~ we did stupid big swings off railway bridges, in the middle of night, on old rope, climbed into water-towers to abseil ~ we should be dead ~ we drove too fast ~ we trust one another ~ he belayed my first lead - on this route:

He tried to rescue me, and eventually did when i got stuck halfway down a bridge swinging in the span in the middle of the night.

im lucky to have him as a friend, even if he is on the other side of the world...

and i'll surf with him in 9 weeks.

surfing eddie

my friend eddie
i first surfed with him, climbed with him, travelled with him...
he's a fun dude

pub and ocean

 this is probably the greatest pub in the world, i spent most of the the summer weekends in this pub from 2003 -2006 - i love it

this is the beach that i learnt to surf at - and never really left, its always going to be special to me, it might be cold, and it might be a looooong paddle through walls of whitewater but its fun!

3 from the street outside my mums

the longest journey begins with a bumpy 14 hours to Dubai

finally got here in one piece...finally, was all a bit of a disaster, flight circled Birmingham for an hour then got sent up to Newcastle, managed to land a 777-300 on a too short runway, that was an experience, stopped a few feet short of the grass at the end of the runway... sat on the apron for 2.5 hours before getting off with the offer of a coach back to Birmingham....Newcastle to Birmingham on a coach....in the snow...no thanks.
So i made a dash on the Newcastle metro to Newcastle central, avoided the drunks and got a train to Birmingham, arrived 14+ hours later than imagined, twas a long 48 hours of travel!