Things i've not seen

He draws his hands tight into his chest as he folds forwards and starts to contract in rage. At first his fingers curl and his knuckles whiten as the tension grows. The sinews on his arms become visible as the anger moves up and he breathes deep as he starts to spin towards me, his head lifting and his eyes becoming visible. Then we make eye contact, and it’s over. He collapses in giggles.

‘Nice try Lisa’ I smile. ‘My turn’, and I begin the ritual.

We’re stuck in the endless Kalk Bay stop / go, with a waiting time at the red light of fifteen minutes or so, and we’re killing time trying to act the most angry. Finally the light recedes and we push on, arriving in Masi a few minutes later.

I pull to a stop outside Lisa’s shack.

‘Tim, please, my money’.

‘Yoh, I nearly forgot’.

I fumble through the shrapnel for the 3 rand I’ve been guarding that Lisa will use to buy chips and a drink. It’s precious, and he eyes the two coins I hand over warily to ensure they add up to the necessary amount. Once happy, he steps down from the car, and makes for his house where I spot his mother.

Lisa’s surfing is getting good; he made the Cape Time’s this week following a good showing at a local development surf meeting, so I get out to pass on the good news. I make my way between two small shacks, along the mud pathway and stepping to avoid a large puddle of discarded washing soap. I watch as Lisa greets his mother and moves behind her, where she holds his head briefly before turning to greet me.

Her eyes are glazed and she moves slowly to meet my extended hand. It takes a moment but it’s soon apparent she is drunk, and the strong smell of vodka on her breath masks the mumbled greeting she extends to me. She begins to talk but the conversation moves in circles and she struggles to nail a point and eventually runs out of steam. We stand in awkward silence for a moment until she raises a hand in what seems to be apology, and looks sheepishly towards Lisa who is playing in the dirt with his two coins, seemingly unaware of her gaze. She offers me a hand, and I shake it and promise to be back.

Later that evening my phone vibrates with an SMS. It’s Lisa’s mother, asking me to call. I dial.

‘Tim’ comes the faint reply.

It’s Lisa, on his mother’s phone.

‘I am sorry for my mother, she was very drunk.’

‘It’s OK Lisa. How are you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he continues. ‘I see you tomorrow yes?’ his voice seems worried.

‘Of course you will Lisa, we’ll go surfing again’.

‘OK Tim, see you tomorrow, good night’.

And with that, the phone goes quiet.

A quick tale of a giant strawberry

The man with no teeth is at the stop/go again, pitching through his gap tooth smile to a captive audience as they wait for the reprieve of a green light. Our Tazz is over loaded with willing punters; there are no strawberries on sale in Masi and the man with no teeth has a crate full. If he’ll take 20 bucks then he’s made a sale, and made seven people very happy.

‘35 Rand Me Laaanie, fresh farm strawberry.’

He accepts 20, after a fight.

The strawberries are partitioned amongst hungry fingers, handfuls at a time. Corro gets the prize; a huge, almost gruesome looking thing beset by sweet pink tumours that looks like a warped pair of lips. He juggles it from palm to palm, as a jeweler might handle a prized diamond, holding it up to the light and savoring its bountiful unsightliness in glutonous anticipation. Then, he stuffs it into his pocket, away from prying eyes.

‘Ya, 10 rand’ he grins.

He’s gonna sell it. Cheeky bastard

Lisa and his Snoek

It’s the second of the month and Lisakanye smells of fish. He lays a grubby hand on my shoulder and I flinch at its oily stench. He smiles.

‘Snoooek’ he says, dragging out the word until it resembles the slender, sleek body of its same sake.

‘How much?’ I ask.

‘Nine rand’ he replies, rattling off the R.

‘Where’d you get nine bucks for Snoek?’ 

‘My Marthar,’

‘Your Mother?’

‘Yes, grant you see. It’s not me, it government, ask government.’

‘Child welfare?’

‘Ah, see, it’s nice neh?’ he smiles before dashing away.

It’s the second of the month and Lisa can buy fish on his mother’s welfare. He speaks pigeon English, but he knows ‘Child Welfare’. I wander how many nine year olds understand what a government grant is.

Children grow old quick here.

Collaboration with Guy Martin for HUCK Magazine.

Collaboration with Guy Martin for the latest edition of HUCK magazine.

HUCK

Soccer Surf Road Trip Complete

9,000 Km's in three weeks, a country traversed to the dance and beat of an African World cup. It's all there to view at http://www.soccersurfroadtrip.com/?m=1. Check it out, may be something more from this in the future.

Surfing needs Hooligans

If Pro-surfing has a colour, then it’s colour is beige.

I’ve never been a fan of surf contests. Surfing for me has always been a form of escape and so surf contests, with the crowds, groupies, P.A systems and branded grandstands, have always sat at the opposite end of the surfing spectrum to where I find my stoke. But this was the ‘CT, being hosted at ‘J-Bay’, the 25^th anniversary and the ‘Greenest’ event on tour, and I was at a loose end after a highly entertaining but surf starved month on the road following the football World Cup, so I thought why not. I made the ten-hour drive from Cape Town, checked into my hostel, got drunk at the Mexican and took up my perch on the boardwalk.

Supers was beautiful. 6 ft and sky blue with only two guys out, just like in the grainy photos from the 60’s that decked the walls of all those new restaurants about town. But by the time I’d watched the tenth pro surfer jack hammer his way down the point in identical fashion to the last, I’d already grown weary; privately disappointed at myself for being so easily duped and growing ever more resentful for every bottom turn - top turn combo that bludgeoned home the obvious point to us, the passive, bovine spectators that:

‘This was simply not entertainment’.

Where was the passion? Where was the drama? Andy Vs Kelly, Jordy Vs Mick, had I missed something? This was pro-surfing. Surfing’s heavily branded, heavily endorsed showpiece with carrots in the shape of cash prizes and diamond encrusted watches. If there is such a thing as the brotherhood of surfing then its place was not here. We, the spectators, had no loyalty. This was a place for high entertainment, where the spectator is king. And if they are not entertained, so they should say so. Did 90,000 English fans stand idly by as their team bored their way to a 0-0-draw Vs. Algeria? Did 90,000 Bafana fans shrug their shoulders when their keeper was wrongly sent from the field? No, they inhaled deeply and exhaled a string of profanities that screamed,

‘ We are not entertained!’

So as I listened to the muted applause as yet another pro limped to a disappointing 5.5 at pumping supers, and the sighs as Slater exited early, I bit my tongue and listened instead to the voice in a dark and suppressed corner of my sub-conscious.  

’Surfing,’ it said, ‘needs hooligans’.

If this was the ‘circus’ then where was the flair? Where were the airs, sushi rolls and rodeo flips of all those industry movies? I wanted to see Pro’s surfing so far beyond themselves that surfing no longer felt tangible to me, the average Joe spectator, and crossed into another dimension entirely. That, to me, is entertainment. And if that isn’t possible, if it’s too much to ask, then I want to see pro’s lined up at heaving Shipsterns and handed identical little twigs for boards, where the last man standing collects the million dollars whilst his would be competitors are airlifted to hospital. That would be entertainment.

I want to see Slater Vs Irons at Teahupoo against the sort of maelstrom of partisan abuse that I heard as a kid at the Manor ground in Oxford. I want to see Irons taking off under the lip as a thousand screaming Slater fans bay for his blood from the shoulder, where every blowout is cheered drunkenly like a six by the Barmy Army. I want to see Parkinson pull into a barrel at Pipe in front of a beach load of Fanning fans, arm in arm singing terrace songs.

But no, pro surfing felt bland. The women donned their bikinis to stalk the pro’s up the beach whilst the men sucked in their guts and talked shit now that they couldn’t out muscle each other in the line-up. The sponsors dashed down to the waters edge to greet the lonely pro, to slap him on the back and dish out a branded cap for a T.V interview. At least Jordy pulled it out of the bag for the hometown crowd and stirred up a little life.

Yes this is surfing, yes we are laid back and competition isn’t in our blood. And that is a good thing, but do we always need to conform to stereotype?  Maybe we know deep down that the idea of Pro surfing is in itself crass, but by suppressing it we do the sport no favours. If people want pro surfing to succeed then they should embrace it, flaunt it and push it to excess, and they then deal with the consequences. If 20/20 could revitalise cricket, imagine what could be done with surfing with a little passion and creativity. But if we’re unsure, if it’s pushing the sport to areas we’re not willing to cross, should we not rather question its legitimacy all together? 

Living the World Cup with 45 kids.

If Soccer City is the beating heart of South Africa’s World Cup, deep in the heart of Soweto, then Green Point is its elegant neighbour, rising out of the wealthy suburbs, tucked neatly under Lion’s head, its translucent white exterior glimmering like satin in the Cape Town night. Until recently, Cape Town radiated a European nonchalance about the forth-coming festivities. The neon mile of Long Street had been pumped up for a couple of parades, and there was the draw deep within the walls of the Convention Centre, but aside from that, the intrusion of a vuvuzela or the broad sweep of a marauding Bafana troupe had yet to jolt this wealthy little corner from it’s morning lattes and spinach croissants. Tonight though it is different, and the World Cup is alive and well in Cape Town.

Bafana have just drawn the opening game with Mexico and the nation is buzzing with a new sense of hope and belief. We left Masiphumelele shortly after the Bafana goal in two taxis’s
bound for Sea Point. With no reception and only static, we rely on passing cars and petrol pump attendants to relay the scores. 1-0 becomes 1-1. The final whistle from Soccer City comes as we round Cape Town’s Waterfront and catch our first view of Green Point, enormous and shimmering with a deep sunset behind, everyone goes wild, not just the kids. We are now living in this World Cup.

We reach the roadblocks and encounter a mass of people of all shapes and colours marching north to the beat of drums and vuvuzelas. The police spot our passes and wave us through, we follow the column north and the kids hang out of the windows, greeting the visiting fans that respond with delight and reach for their hands as we pass. 

‘Urrrruguuuay! French! French! French!’ scream the kids. They know France, they have never heard of Uruguay. 

In the night the stadium looks vast and with the fan parks lit up around the perimeter the stage seems colossal, Olympian, something very important is going on here. The atmosphere is charged and the kids walk in two lines, holding our hands, with wide eyes. We first pass through the outer gate, into the main compound, passed the stands with street soccer demonstrations and competitions. 

There are fans from everywhere, not just France and Uruguay, but from every corner of the globe. It’s overwhelming and we walk on trying to take it all in. We reach the gates where we will hand over the tickets. We are met by representatives from Sony who will help us negotiate the massive crowds. The Stadium is now above us, hanging in the night air and radiating to the pulse of thousands and thousands of vuvuzelas, drummers and cheering fans. We catch the odd glimpse of the interior as we walk, huge Uruguayan flags draped over the gangways carrying messages in Spanish as you sometimes see on the TV coverage of the Copa America; another world come to our doorstep. 

We reach our zone and start to climb the gangway. I walk at the head of the line, with Lethu and Qamani, their tiny hands in my own. The noise grows and grows and slowly the pitch opens up from the glare of bright white. The stands are washed in colour; the air is a thick and heavy din. It is the greatest stage, and we stand, 46 children and adults from the tiny township of Masiphumelele, two grown men from the UK and one grown lady from South Africa, completely spell bound. Speechless and utterly in awe of the scale of Africa’s first World Cup. 

The anthems pass by. The kids prefer the Marseillaise and as it winds its way towards the crescendo they mimic the French supporters and begin to cheer. The French in turn try to coax their vuvuzelas into life but cough and splutter. The kids reply with volley of belching that comes effortlessly, through years of practice. It’s one of many little interactions that play out through the evening.

The match begins, the vuvuzelas drone on, building and falling with the passing passages of play. If the stadium seems modern and whitewashed, the vuvuzelas remind us we’re in Africa. Though their novelty is already wearing thin, their constant and incessant din reaches the furthest corner of the cavernous stadium, adding a richness and gravitas to the already charged atmosphere.

Mexican waves sweep the stadium. The kids spot their heroes; Anelka, Evra, Ribery, Malouda, all the names from the T.V. Henry arrives to a huge ovation and though it transpires that the match is a dud, it doesn’t matter; as non-partisan observers this is a spectacle, a showpiece for an event that’s been building for four years, one we thought we’d never see, but now a dream we are living out. It’s a surreal evening, running on heightened senses and full of emotion. We stay long after the final whistle, until the stadium is empty. Several on the kids fall fast
asleep, exhausted, and we pick them up as we make our way back to the buses, back over the mountain and back to Masi.

It’s late, past midnight, and the streetlights have failed. It’s dark. We run the kids home through their various streets, witnessing one drunken fistfight as we go. At the new informal settlement, where there are no roads and only trodden mud paths through the broken bush, Thomas accompanies the kids to their doors where they are swept up by their parents who have waited up. Masi is considered a relatively peaceful township, but these new settlements are poorly lit and seldom patrolled, there are troubles here. Days like these are important.

I am English, I am cursed

I wish sometimes that I wasn’t a fan and that I could look on with indifference and enjoy a simple sporting spectacle for the aesthetic and nothing more. No partisan cheer, no vested interest, just taking in the occasion and enjoying it. But I am cursed. I am fan. 

The roots go deep and are hard to shed, try as I might. I grew up a child in inner England, surrounded by lush playing fields with good facilities. A friend of mine’s father ran the kids after school league, we trained everyday and won most our games. Football was everything when I was a kid, my first world cup - Italia ’90 - England made the semi’s and returned home heroes. One day I wanted to reach those highs, football became everything. I was more than I fan.

Little did I know what becoming an England supporter entailed. Nobody warned me. My parents didn’t follow the game, or more accurately had given up. 1990 was a false dawn and a
litany of failures followed. I feel sure that the England team fails unlike any other, running aground in the calmest of waters, surcoming to the most preventable of calamities. I wander if every nation feels what we do, if we all share the same feeling just from a different perspective. But I often feel being an England fan exposes me to a unique type of emotional torment and pain. All the past glories of our small island, we now look for in our football team. We expect so much. From 1990 – 2010, my World Cups are nightmares revisited. Each time I tell myself it will be different, each time I think of new and ingenious ways to circumnavigate the pain of just watching England, but I’m yet to find a tonic.

So tonight for example: England vs. USA. More than just an opponent, the England football team cannot loose to the ‘Yanks’ at ‘soccer’. These are the shamed thoughts of my blunted football brain, but I cannot hide them, I am an England fan. The USA are more than worthy opponents, I know this, I’ve waited for England’s World Cup in grim anticipation. So I’ve attempted to harness the positive emotion of yesterday’s opening day events and watch the game with my friends in the township of Masiphumelele, arriving with a few friends with a large steak and ale stew, as they will be eating in the pubs of England. Maybe the immediacy of the surrounds will help take the edge off the match and reinforce that this is just a game: that the World Cup is about far more than simply football.

We are 12 in the shack; one living room and two bedrooms. 7 people sleep here. The TV sits on a dresser on top of which lies a string-less guitar and several faded football trophies. To the right is the kitchen, supported by a wooden strut that obscures the view of the chef, Thera, as he stirs the rice on the twin camping burner that also provides warmth from the building rain and wind outside. The carpet under foot is stained from the various leaks from the ceiling and we sit in a semi circle around the old Sony TV, the same model we had at home when I was much younger.

Most of the township is decked in England flags, or at least showing their support in one way or another. Premiership football is huge here and is the only international football to be televised aside from the domestic ABSA Premiership. More historically, the English also abolished slavery in the Cape in the 1800’s so we have a good reputation amongst the Xhosa of the Cape, so I feel welcomed as we sit in the wooden shack eating our stew, chatting away.

As soon as the national anthems draw to a close I realise I’ve not spoken in several minutes, I’m fixated on the T.V, I’ve turned my shoulder from Hanli who sits trying to hold my hand, my feet are drawn up underneath me and Thomas, our host and friend, indicates to get my feet off the main sofa, sitting pride of place in front of the TV. I apologise. I’ve known Thomas for years, he’s laughing though, this is a new side of my usually languid personality.

Gerrard scores within minutes; it looks so easy, cue celebrations. But an English fan is a nervous fan and the commentator reels off the leads we’ve blown in the past. The team look comfortable tough, we have players used to big occasions, a coach who’s been to the very top, a team that qualified scoring freely and unbeaten. We should be confident. I should be able to sit back and join in the conversation that drifts around the shack, but I can’t. 

Then another moment. Day one it was Bafana’s goal, when time stood still and a nation exploded. Today it’s calamity, and another nation implodes as Rob Green fumbles a ball that
barely trickles over the line from a tepid long-range effort to bring the USA level. It all comes crashing down. A bigger team would bounce back, a Brazil maybe, or a Germany. But not England, we are so fragile. We loose our shape, we snap at every opportunity, we scrap and scramble when our defence is pierced and we limp to the final line to collect a point. The shack is full of tuts.

‘England, they always blow it’.

It’s all too familiar and I could be anywhere, home or abroad, pub or a shack, the conversations will all be the same. There is no escaping, if you want to support England, this is your lot. 
 

Bafana have scored, Africa is alive

Five o’clock and a moment to set the silent dreams of a nation free and once again unite it in a moment of euphoria. Making our way down the street and out of Masiphumelele en route to Green Point Stadium, the township erupted with a people ready to believe that this was their World Cup, and that they did indeed belong. Joy on a level I have never once seen.

We had just left Kolobe St, in the northern confines of the township of Masiphumelele, en route to Green Point Stadium courtesy of Sony who had donated us 45 tickets. We’d
watched a stronger looking Mexico team run Bafana around the park in the first half, and the 60 or so packed into the tiny wooden shack had watched through narrowed, squinted eyes as every attack was repelled by a thread bare looking defence. In stark contrast, every Bafana attack was cheered wildly, to fever pitch. 

We’d timed our departure for town at half time. That Bafana were still clinging on was reason for cheer and the streets were full with the rich noise of trumpeting vuvuzelas. Everyone was dancing, pleased to still be in the game, in the tournament, avoiding the day one humiliation everyone feared here. The kids piled into the two mini-buses, their watching mothers’ ululating filling the air, proud to see their young children witness South Africa’s finest hour in the flesh. The kids jostled for space and chatted eagerly about Henry, Anelka, Evra; the names from the Premiership that plays late on free view here, filling the screens into the township nights. 

Then something happens. The taxi driver screams, unable to enunciate his words clearly, fumbling with the handle of the minibus he’s just jammed to a halt in the middle of the street, pulling the radio cables out in his scramble to leave the cab. People come falling out of the shacks, pulling at their shirts, crying, screaming, and wailing in disbelief. The bus doors fly open, the kids run into the street where they are picked up by mothers, fathers, brothers, anyone, and everything stops. Bafana have scored the first goal of the World Cup. A host nation, the lowest to partake in a World Cup, that has tiptoed round the dream of glory and been happy just to partake now believes. The World Cup is theirs. South Africa comes alive. It is beautiful.

This is street game

The kids run over the broken tarmac surface kicking a ragged and deflated football, its panels hanging off from the concrete wear and tear. Their bare feet seem to take the strain though. The pitch is the width of the narrow litter strewn street, the goals are breeze blocks, cracked and up turned. The pace is frenetic, the scores are high. There’s a chicken on the field, chased away by a stray dog, and a car passes by interrupting play. An angry woman tosses scoldings from a cardboard clad window, but they are lost in the din from a nearby boom box, so the kids carry on, and the onlookers, many adult, cheer. That same window, one can safely assume by the severity of the scoldings, was once glass. This is ‘street game’. Township street football: Grassroots football, South African style.

They play for ‘5 bob’, 50 cents. Each child pitches in a small handful of precious copper change and to the winners go the spoils, enough to buy chips and a cool drink from the coca-cola sponsored ‘Spaza’ next door, the tin-clad grocery store.

Players turn out mostly in Chiefs and Pirates shirts. Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, the big teams from Soweto, the big teams in the township. They’re not from round here, this is Cape Town, and Cape Town Ajax sit close to the top whilst Chiefs and Pirates sit mid table, but this is South Africa and roots matter. Chiefs and Pirates are mainly black, Ajax are coloured. Their support comes from the coloured townships of the Cape Flats, here its all Chiefs. All Pirates.  Then obviously there’s Manchester, Chelsea and Liverpool. Everyone loves Liverpool here. ‘You’ll never walk alone’ they say in all things bar Scouse. English flags here fly in equal numbers to their South African counterparts. Rooney and co will be warmly received. They like the English in the townships.

World Cup 1

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of the World Cup. I grew up one of three brothers, in a sports mad household in middle England, far from the beach and the ocean that now claim so many of my waking hours. We’d tear around the house high on the sugars, flavorings and preservatives packed into the penny sweets we’d swipe from the post office, until my mother would snap and kick us out into the garden with a football.

There the three of us would spend many hours playing three and in, headers and volleys, re-enacting the moves of our heroes. Mine was Clayton Blackmore, wing-back for Manchester United, a working man’s David Beckham. These were the days of Division One, where the BBC retained coverage. There was no Premier League, no Sky TV; British football was a tough and dour affair, played on battered fields in wrought iron stadiums with standing sections, barriers and pies. Foreign signings were limited and English teams traditionally fared poorly in European competition, so the World Cup was our chance to peer into the glamour clad arena of international football.

It was Italia ’90, with the stick-man logo, Pavarotti doing the theme tune and Schillachi the super-sub scoring every game. England were there under the late Sir Bobby Robson, then just Bobby and leader of the plucky band of underdogs sent in from a recession wrought England. I can’t remember much of the pre-tournament hype, I was only nine at the time, but I remember the characters. Waddle’s mullet, Gaza’s ball grabbing, an ageing Shilton, bloodied Butcher, Linker, Platt and that last gasp volley to squeeze us past Belgium. They seemed eager, honest and hard working and there was little fanfare as there is today. There was an endearing human edge to the side, battling for all they were worth, as we fought the recession at home.

They won through to the semi-finals where they went out to West Germany on penalties in an epic encounter, I watched it peering from under the covers at a friend’s house, and returned home to a heroes welcome having won the hearts of a nation, in so doing speeding the launch of the Premier League, from where English Football would change forever.

But the lasting memory of the world cup was the match against Cameroon. It was the second round match up, or the quarter, I can’t quite remember, but it was the knockout stages, and we were up against this unknown quantity from Africa, the Dark Continent, of which I knew nothing. I remember looking Cameroon up on the map before the game, I remember the pre-match coverage and the images of a world I had neither seen nor ever imagined, I remember they had a 40 year old playing for them – Roger Mila –, I remember the deep green shirts; the colour of the jungle that I imagined enveloped this far away land.

I remember the strong and athletic figures they cut as they stood through their formal and colonial anthem. The speed, the rhythm, the freedom and flow and the total disregard for the traditional tactical play favoured by the European sides I knew so well. Cameroon actually played, with no fears of the consequences. This was new, it was foreign, and as I would come to know, inherently and unmistakeably African.

I remember Mila’s jig in the corner when he scored and I thought it was over, and the relief on Lineker’s exhausted looking face when he fired home the penalty that saw us through by the skin of our teeth, against this dark and unknown force that put Africa deep into my conscious.

So today, sitting in Cape Town, waiting for the cup to come, I am excited. And though I want England to succeed, in all their glitz and their pomp, a large part of my heart will lie with Africa, where I live today running a football charity, where football has a humble home much like the ones I saw on the TV in 1990, that opened my eyes to this weird and wonderful place, all those years ago.

The Ocean

I’m writing this from my ocean side apartment in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, looking out over the expanse of blue that is False Bay. Everyday I rise to this most effortless of backdrops, its ever-changing moods marking the passage of the days and seasons. As city life unfolds so uncomfortably around me, the changing faces of the ocean keep me grounded and I can start my day in peace. I owe this to the sea. Without it I would be lost.

I was too young to remember my first experience of the ocean, so I will tell it as my father recounts it to me. Growing up inland, we would head to Cornwall every summer, where we’d swim and sail and bodyboard. It was a family ritual, my grandfather would make the same pilgrimage with my father long before I was born and the M4 motorway heading west from our home to the seaside had been built. Theirs was a 16 hour trek across rural Britain with a caravan in tow, getting stuck on single-track hills until the local farmer arrived.

My grandfather would make bodyboards for the family, bending and shaping the wood using the weight of his car, then varnishing and finishing them in time for the summer. These same boards we grew up surfing with as kids, relics from a bygone era, and my father recalls the day he looked up in surprise to see me dragging a huge rented foam mal down to the water’s edge. From that moment, the wooden boards became forgotten family relics and the ocean became my obsession.

For me, the most significant time was the day I got my licence. I’d stay at my friend's house, it’d be 2am and we’d make the modern day three hour charge down be the motorway, frothing at the possibility of waves. These were the days before internet forecasts so we’d just go in hope. Some days it would be on fire. We’d surf all day and stop only to eat. Other days, it would be junk but we’d surf just as hard. Often, we’d sleep on the beach too. I remember once waking to dolphins playing off Treyarnon Bay near Padstow. It was sometime around 5am and a tractor was tilling the sand in the early morning light. I suited up and jumped in without a soul in sight. This was freedom on a new level and we lost ourselves in the object of our deepest desire.

As the single-mindedness of my teenage wave lust waned, so my appreciation for the ocean changed and I found myself becoming increasingly introspective about my surfing and what it meant to me. Through my obsession, I’d become increasingly ostracised from the circles I had grown up in and I began to feel increasingly ill at ease when land locked. The world I’d found at the ocean’s edge atrophied beneath the rotten concrete and asphalt of England’s cities. I began to realise it wasn’t just the surfing I missed, it was the ocean and the communities that thrived off it. In them, I could see myself.

Increasingly, I was drawn to the road in search of something different. I avoided the main surfing hubs and instead ended up in Peru, Ecuador, Northern and Southern Africa and the Western Sahara, spending time in some of the most impoverished yet wonderful and welcoming communities I’d met. We were united through our love of the ocean. It broke down the cultural differences that existed between us and allowed us to interact as friends with a common bond. I remember the fisherman in Peru, sharing with me his fish head stew by candlelight in his threadbare mud-brick cottage. He was picking the flesh from the gnarled jaw and sucking the eyeballs as the fillets had been sold at market so he could educate his children. A simple existence forged from the ocean and for which he gave thanks each day in prayer. He was happier than any man I’d met. And for every country I visited, there was another such example. All happy, all giving thanks to the sea - the great provider.

It was around this time I graduated and I was free to make my own path. I’d become deeply uncomfortable with the society I was in and the selfish and materialistic mindset it encouraged. Success was assigned a monetary value and drive was the key to achieving top dollar. And for what, I couldn’t quite see. Everything it extolled, I had found the opposite by the sea, and there I’d also found happiness. But I ceded to pressure, the responsibility to consider a future.

I tried for a short time to fit in in England’s industrial core but what I found was all I feared; materialism, indulgence, selfishness. It left me depressed and devoid of life. I longed for a return to the beach and the open water as there I found context and reason. It gave me simplicity, honesty and a tangible link to the natural world. The city was fake, artificial, a graveyard to the soul. The freedom I sought, I found on the natural fault line between ocean and land.

Today, the ocean is a part of me and indelibly so. It’s impossible to articulate a respect that runs so many fathoms deep. The lessons I’ve learned stretch far beyond the shoreline and have reached deep into my life. I cannot imagine a life without the sea, yet I still know so little and there’s so much still to explore.

In the ocean, I see life in all its beauty and fragility, and all of which I lost in the city whose lights extinguish the stars above and whose concrete smothers the earth below. In the sea’s constant flux I see spontaneity and renewal: the ebb and flow of the tide, the reshaping of a sand bar, the arrival of a new swell, the coming of the basking sharks at Harlyn Bay, the arrival of the Southern Rights during the winters of Cape Town. The ocean is alive and in delicate balance, where days unfurl and are subject to the chaos of the passing elements. Yet life in all its resilience wins through. It is here I find comfort in moments of doubt, assurance that I will be OK.

As I look out over the ocean at the day’s end, I am humbled.

Loss and Rediscovery

A while ago I snapped my knee. It was in the surf but was in no way heroic. A mistimed floater on a two-foot closeout at Jongens, head over heels and the leg stayed put. A snapped PCL, torn MCL, stretched ACL, a torn medial meniscus and a headache. From Jongens it was a long and painful drive back to Cape Town in the back of a rusted Tazz with blown speakers and no aircon. At sport’s science I was told to forget surfing for the forseasble future and think about surgery instead. And with that, I passed out. Stone cold, like a coward running from reality. When I came to, weak as a newborn child in a thick cold sweat, I realized this was all very real. My next thought was of the new suit I’d just ordered for summer. Bummer.

The operation came and went and I was soon strapped into a full leg cast rendering me more incapacitated than I’d initially expected. Any lingering thoughts of surf were quickly banished as my main challenge became getting out of the house in one piece. My day became littered with the most innocuous of obstacles: Showers, stairs, lavatories, raised curbs and street hawkers who heard me coming a mile off and knew I could not escape. Life, in short, changed.

And the surf, as it always does in those situations, pumped. From my bedroom window I watched the reef fire for two weeks straight. One day it got huge and they were riding big boards through the barrels on the right whilst the spongers were the only ones to tackle the main bowl. Then came the most consistent summer in years, with the Cape copping it’s fair share of media exposure as session after session from ‘down the beach’ plastered the surf sites from which I eventually had to abstain. It was too much. I was in surfing purgertory, and for what? I thought i’d done ok.

So slowly I withdrew from the surf scene. I stopped checking the forecasts, stopped reading the mags, stopped ogling the reef from my window each morning and prepared to tackle life from a new, surfless perspective. I read, I wrote, I researched and planned. I spent weeks tying all the loose ends I’d never attended to and built stronger and firmer relationships with my friends in the charity I run in the Cape townships. I got to grips with the manual settings on my camera, I found an old 8mm and messed around with that, anything to keep my mind busy and off my rapidly atrophying muscles.

When the day came for the cast to come off, I took my first steps under the watchful eye of Bruce the masochist, and I learnt to walk again. It was humbling, time consuming and it provided much amusement to the innocent observer. Life, more than at any other time in my memory, reverted to a study of the minutiae, the building blocks. Walking, twisting, bending; every action took time and consideration and it was a journey full of mishaps and immense satisfaction as the simplest of progressions bought huge relief and reward. I learned a lot.

By March the swells had by in large past and the South East set in to blow the Atlantic flat and False Bay a brown, scummy maelstrom. For all that had passed it seemed fitting that I should come right again, in the death rattle. My first go out was at a glassy but hungover and ramshackle ‘berg, suffering after a 10 day South East binge. I was weak, as were the waves, and I cut a forlorn figure dragging myself to my feet on a big yellow rental, but I was surfing again, performance did not matter; I drew relief from a pure line, joy from simple trim or a lazy glide, the simple things. 

As my strength returned, so my desire to surf increased and I took to the waves with renewed vigour, but with a changed outlook. Conditioned somewhat by my still weakened condition I began riding a single fin that had long been resigned to the back of my quiver. A little bulkier than my other boards it was more forgiving and didn’t need to be worked like a thruster. The ride was pure; one fin, two rails. Once more I found myself returning to the basics, learning to walk; trim, positioning, glide and flow. No heroics, no histrionics, just enjoying the ride for what it was, the pure and unbridled joy of being on a wave. No need to get ahead of myself or overcomplicate, just cruising and enjoying what I had. Simplicity, and it felt right. It felt good.

Out of the water things too had changed. I had become reliable for the first time in years, and with this most simple of virtues I had gained the trust and friendship of my coworkers and friends. Work in the townships picked up a pace and the charity developed dramatically over the course of the four months with new staff, projects, legal structures and funding all coming in. I found new leads for writing and publishing, I started a website, a blog for my photos. I even contemplated my first book, but never quite put pen to paper. And I was satisfied, maybe more so than I had been when I pushed it just a little too far.

My housemate insists this injury was the best thing to have happened to me. My dear housemate is also Irish and gambles for a living but, though I am loathe to admit it, he has a point. Time away brings with it perspective and, though the barren months dragged by, the absence of surf allowed other aspects of life to secure a footing and bloom.

Surfing and the ocean are still very important, once they were everything and they still remain close to it. I missed the ocean, I know that much! But life is better in 3D, it’s so easy to get bogged down. Today surfing fits in rather than taking over and I appreciate the time in the water more for it; just cruising, enjoying the ride and trying not to force it; a simple trim, a pure line rather than breaking my back to break an arc.

Sometimes it takes a nock to bring you round, a break to rediscover, to usher in a new perspective. It’s not always pleasant, but it can be constructive to slow down once in a while and focus on the simple things. 

The Deep

It’s strange, from all those days spent sliding across the ocean’s smooth surface, I’ve never glimpsed the life that unfolds in the void below. In truth I’ve never mustered the courage, and I can credit it to a childhood misfortune, fishing with my father in the north of Scotland and the miraculous resurrection of a seemingly dead trout right next to my foot. Since that day, fish have always had an unsettling presence and I’ve avoided their world whenever possible; I’m easy to spot in the surf, I’m the one with his legs curled awkwardly underneath him who splashes feverishly at the slightest sign of an approaching shoal.

So today feels unnatural at best. The boat is a rib with a metal rail running down the centre onto which we all cling to save being bounced into the frigid waters of the Atlantic as we head out of Hout Bay en route for Duiker Island. If you’ve not heard of Duiker Island you may have heard of Dungeons, where mere mortals ride mountains on rhino chasers as the winter swells come charging out of the deep roaring forties and jack on the shallow reef, home to an enormous colony of seals. Today I am not a surfer, today I am a freediver, and I will be diving in the waters off Duiker island, in a thick wetsuit with a weight belt. Up till this moment, I’ve not even snorkeled.

I am here because of a friend. Hanli is a freediver. She holds records in South Africa. But she is more than just that, she is an adventurer, a free spirit, strong willed but kind hearted and of an infectious enthusiasm for the ocean that keeps her. Hanli also makes good tea, this is important, she has shelves devoted to its various blends and infusions and it was over several cups that she persuaded me that it was time to conquer my fear and discover something new.  He who wakes breathless and sweat sodden after nightmares of swirling baitfish balls. This was her idea, but who was I to say no? The tea was good, and it sounded like an adventure. Something new, something different.

So we meet in the harbour at 10am. Hanli with her bespoke carbon fibre fins, and me, in dilapidated surfing suit and an ad-hoc selection of boots and gloves to protect against the colder waters of the Atlantic.

It’s a bumpy fifteen-minute trip out through the kelp until we arrive at the boiling waters just off Duiker. When dungeons is breaking, this is the graveyard Inside, where fallen surfers and battered jet-skis wash ashore, but today there’s only a whisper of swell on the reef at the back, and the seals are out in force, playing in the waves. Hanli hands me a mask and we fall over the side, into the blue.

Previous excursions under the surface have always remained satisfyingly blurred in the absence of a mask, with the finer details of ocean life rendered blurry and indecipherable, and therefore non-existent to my mind. However through the mask the deep becomes visible for the first time and I make out purple anemones through the flotsam of the disturbed kelp beds. The water flushes cold around my suit as I struggle to bring my breathing under control and relax. Peering beneath the surface, this ocean environment I know and love so well seems strangely foreign. Beside me I feel a reassuring grip as Hanli takes my hand, her hand signal indicates five long breaths, then we’ll be going under. I close my eyes and try to focus as I fill my lungs to what feels like their very limit, and then we dive.

With the assistance of the weight belts we slide through the thick kelp canopy that sits just below the surface and brush aside the vast swathes of deep green to revel a forest of thick stems climbing up from the bottom, swaying eerily on the tide in deathly silence. I feel pressure and equalise for the first time, and with the release comes a wave of sound. I hear the reef crackling below and soon the beat of passing seals. From land they seem so cumbersome, but below they are bright and playful, cart wheeling around us with small echoes of delight, animated and brimming with personality.

I feel the burn in my lungs for the first time, but she leads me on and to the bottom where we sit and watch as light falls in silent shafts from the silhouettes above. The burn grows deeper, I have to leave. I rise slowly, exhaling a stream of bubbles in the silent blue-grey. I break the surface and breath deeply. Overhead the sentinel looms large and I am intently aware of the sound of gulls and crashing surf. The ocean’s surface gleams in the daylight, impenetrable, a marble lid on the world I just left below. To my left I hear the groans of a large male seal as he shuffles awkwardly to mark his territory. I feel a smile on my lips, I want to go back, and I compose myself and prepare to go back under.

I’ve found a new passion. Not merely freediving but the deep. It’s been so close for so long but has always seemed a distant, unreachable and, in many ways, an impersonal space. Like many things that I deemed out of my reach, rendered untouchable by an irrational fear, I experienced it through other mediums; books, television, movies, but it was never a place I thought I’d experience so closely and it was so alien to me that I could never fully understand and appreciate its intricacies and fragility in full. For each brief descent, for each brief glimpse of life below the water, I became increasingly overwhelmed by the volume, complexity, beauty and sheer personality of the world under the surface. I saw it; I understood it and I appreciated it. These days, that’s an important realisation.

Scotland is...

Scotland is....

Smile is updated

You'll see a load of new content, it's all the things i've contributed to various publications and sites in the past, all put into the one place. They are mostly out of sync, but they are all there and labelled for you to read.

From here on, who knows.

Two minutes at the spring

‘Here, I’ll get that for you’

It’s late; the stars have finally pierced Cape Town’s sodium glow. From the outfall pipe comes a steady flow of fresh spring water as it bubbles up in the most unlikely of locations, between gated estates in Cape Town’s southern suburbs. We thought we'd be alone.

The policeman hands down two plastic bottles, both empty. One Coke, one Stoney’s, it’s sweet smell still lingers. He struggles under the weight of his flak jacket and his pistol cuts into his lean waist, his night stick jingles against menacing, slightly rusted cuffs. 

‘It’s ok boss’ he replies

‘I’m not your boss, come, pass them down’

‘Sorry boss, it’s just an expression, you see.'

Politics - South African style

As you head east out of East London on the Eastern Cape of South Africa and rejoin the N2 national highway, you descend through fertile green valleys until you reach the muddy brown waters of the Kei River. A relatively new two lane concrete bridge dwarfs the old rusting iron structure that once served as the single track crossing of the R102, guarded by the now decrepit concrete shell that was the border post between the Eastern Cape and the Transkei. It’s an inauspicious crossing these days, perhaps purposely so, and you barely notice the corroded, ivy encrusted iron fence that used to divide white and black.

The Transkei is one of the Xhosa homelands created by the Apartheid governments who cut up and re-drew the South African map, in so doing relocating millions of black and ‘coloured’ South Africans away from their traditional tribal homelands and into large vacant expanses onto which American style block towns were built and heavy industry moved in. Away from the new towns and tar roads, the old small rural communities remained where the traditional tribal way of life of the generations before was continued with emphasis of self-sufficiency and self-governance; a way of life that still continues today. Exit was not permitted without correct paperwork and ID, to be caught outside the border without sufficient identification meant an immediate return. It was only in 1994 that the border post was decommissioned and movement between the Eastern Cape and Transkei was freely permitted.

It’s election time in South Africa and registration was in early February. Those with ID books signed up at their local offices whilst the many without did not. As you trundle along the N2, joining the dots between the small settlements that scatter the surrounding empty green hills, you pass endless signboards, banners and posters championing the various candidates for whom there is little hope: The ANC have held an unassailable majority since 1994 when Nelson Mandela took over the presidency. His success; in taking an objective view on South Africa and transcending the injustices of the apartheid governments in the name of all South Africans, has not been mirrored by subsequent leaders who have been more inclined to adopt a more hardline approach. The pendulum analogy is a common anxiety and one which many fear will be realised in full should highly controversial ANC Leader and probable election victor Jacob Zuma come to power when the votes are counted in April.

Championed by the ANC as an uncomplicated and passionate man of the people many fear that Zuma, a loyal and aggressive Zulu of proud working class heritage, will continue the descent from the days of Mandela and move South Africa into a new era where politics will once again be used to marginalise rather than unite. New splinter party COPE (Congress of the People), a result of the recent power struggle between Jacob Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki, and began by former ANC members loyal to Mbeki and Mandela, offer a credible but ultimately unlikely threat as do the DA (Democratic Alliance) who have had a surge in popularity uniting both white and black voters, but it is the ANC who are roundly expected to keep their absolute majority in the April elections.

Leaving the N2 and pointing towards the hills and coast the roads degenerate, soon becoming little more than dust trails between maize fields and small gatherings of green washed rondavels. Children play innocently in the road; the speed and frequency of the passing traffic poses less of a threat than an opportunity to ask for “Sweeeet, sweeeet”. Men in handsomely cobbled uniforms flag passing pick-up’s for lifts as the signboards and posters of the N2 vanish, as does any semblance of the urban environment inland. Life here is viewed from a very different perspective.

Sitting on a hill early one morning, contemplating a surfless day ahead after heavy overnight rains had swollen the rivers sending brown floodwaters sweeping through the line-up, I meet Meniswa. I watch her idle up the hill in the heat and bid her good morning. Though I am sat in boardshorts with surfboard resting across my lap she mentions she is selling beads and asks if I would like to buy some. I pat my empty pockets and apologise but rather than move on as many of the other local craft sellers would, she drops her bag and sits next to me taking in the morning air as we look out across the bay.

She is 36, though she looks younger, and was born and raised in the Transkei. She is one of 18 children who live with their parents in a small cluster of rondavels at the top of the adjacent hill, marked by a small column of chimney smoke rising through the early morning haze. She spends her days making and selling beads, making enough money to buy bread and rice to accompany the Millies (corn) they harvest from the small field at the back of their huts. If she needs extra spending money she will act as a guide to the local Marijuana plantations hidden in the hills. Though she doesn’t smoke it’s an easy way to make a few Rand and she doesn’t mind relieving the eager tourists of money they are only too willing to flutter.

When I ask if she plans to leave the Transkei she says no. This is her life and was the life of her parents, why would she want to change when all she needs is here? I ask about the rest of her family; her brothers work in the mines north of Jo-Burg but Transkei is home and they always return at every occasion to share their money and honour their family - a trait I have found with most working men I have met in the cities. When I ask her of the coming elections she smiles a soft smile and shakes her head but not in disapproval of the question, it’s clear she pays little heed to politics, family comes first and governing is left to the chief. I am suddenly aware that the ideal of ‘home’ here is far stronger than anywhere else I have visited. The conversation ends and she gets up to go leaving me to trudge the puddle strewn mud path back to my hut and contemplate the simple life.

The more you travel in South Africa, the more people you meet, the more places you see, the more that you are confronted by the huge discrepancies not just between rich and poor but the cultural differences that exist between the different tribes, races and societies of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. The complexities of attempting to govern such a diverse population really hits home as you travel from province to province, interchanging between societies each one the polar opposite of the next, the only tangible link being their South African nationality – a concept only really created in 1994. It’s not just a South African issue, but a problem endemic to African politics. How will politicians who have emerged from the poorest backgrounds and with strong tribal heritage put the needs of a nation ahead of their own people? Their people to whom they are deeply loyal and with whom, have suffered at the hands of previous regimes?

Pride has no place in politics, especially here in Africa. As Barrack Obama cited in his inauguration speech, it’s time to look above and beyond the needs of the individual and to act for the common good. This is the challenge that awaits South Africa’s next president, how he goes about this will determine the future of one of the last peaceful democracies on the African continent.

Volcano days

So for six days, Earth spewed it’s guts and extended to us mere mortals a reminder that we are, and always will be, only human.

The cloud’s gradual precipitation across mainland Europe was really a gift, and I wander if in time we’ll come to mourn its passing. In my highly romanticised opinion, it wasn’t simply an inanimate object but a living, breathing, pulsating reminder of our own existence, the unpredictability of life and the beautiful serendipity of chaos. A poke in the ribs as if to say ‘ Don’t take life too seriously, have a few days on me’.

As stranded tourists made the mad dash for Calais, the Navy awaited in it’s own modern day kitsch rendition ofDunkerque. ‘It’s the spirit of the blitz’ some claimed. Mankind was set to be reunited and rekindled in the spirit of love and kinship, if only for a moment. All it takes is a war, or a volcano. ‘Nah, it’s all just an election stunt’, cried the miserablists.

Back in Sweden, the trains were gloriously blocked and the hire cars all vanished. People, people everywhere and not a lift in sight. From a little island retreat in the Stockholm archipelago, I watched the weather drift through the dreaming spires of the old town with visions of Kerouacflittering in the wings as I contemplated a mad dash across a Europe, now littered with legitimate bums. But the days were bathed in warm spring sunshine that were ushering in colour after a heavy winter, so I decided instead to wander the streets and enjoy this little gift of time.

In a tea garden over cakes and pastries, I met Stina who was hosting her radio show - an open mic session for the disabled where the laughs are real and never self-deprecating. It was real life for all that it is and could be, where there were pancakes with blueberry syrup and cream. Free pancakes that buttered smiles all across the room. Then there were the galleries where I discovered Lee Lozano and her enviable collection of phallus’s and choice use of language. I never knew art could be penises and rude words, never were we taught that at school. Maybe I could have made it after all.

And then the snow came and sifted through the cobbled streets. And with the flurries came Gordana, the Romanian with the kaleidoscope eyes that took me back to the streets of my childhood flicking marbles in the gutter. She took me to a vegetarian café full of arty types. We walked the back streets where she told me of her homeland and the ogre count Dracu who impaled criminals on the street for all to see, from where Bram Stoker drew some inspiration for his Dracula. And somewhere in the cold, a little spark and a memory of tenderness as she held my arm, and I willed the eruptions to continue long into the spring.

And then the cloud shrivelled and we parted ways. The televisions celebrated ‘a swift resumption of normal service’. There were cheers from industry types, ‘hey, we can make money again!’. A swift resumption of routine, a swift return to normality. One of the seats on the flight was mine, and I had to take it, as for me like everyone else, normal life waited. What a downer.

It felt as though for a little while the world woke up from the deepest of slumbers, and we opened our eyes to the skies and our hearts to one and other. For the briefest of moments, we were all alive and well and open to the wonders of the world. And it felt good.

But tomorrow won’t be like today. It’ll be back to reality, and I’ll miss the volcano.