People assume that life in the mountains of Portugal is somehow exotic and mysterious - a heady blend of cheap vinho, ambling donkeys and a stout woman called Mafalda wandering past with a basket of laundry on her head. Of course at times this may be true but for the most part it is just life, normal and unextraordinary.
My existence for many weeks has been a cyclic routine of building site fun, sofa based atrophy and an intermittent sleep pattern. This may explain my lack of blogging, surfing and indeed hair follicles.
Apparently it is unwise to grumble in these turbulent times of Global financial uncertainty - people are losing their jobs, families are losing their homes and the very fabric of the civilised world is starting to fray and tear beneath our home-darned socks.
So I shall not moan as I drag my aching bones from my bed and head to work once again but it would be nice to spend eternity snogging a babe* on the beach rather than mixing tile cement and grout…
I didn’t surf today.
*for babe read Tango (grrr)
…I’m wasn’t entirely sure what the silver lining was when my Vaio failed to boot up earlier last week - even the cloud was fairly difficult to see at first. There was no fanfare, no explosion or fire. No error message or even a small fizzing noise. Just nothing…
I wiggled and tweaked, I thought laterally, logically and calmly and then I sulked for a while. I eventually came to the conclusion that it was (technically speaking) ‘buggered’. All my photographs, drawings and scribings were lost in the merest moment of anticlimax.
So I did what any self respecting man with a tiny screwdriver would do - I took it to pieces.
So here I sit (several days and several headaches later) with a shiny new desktop computer - proudly sporting the Portuguese version of Windows Vista which (for no apparent reason) hates my monitor, all my software and any attempt to network. I have bodged, sworn, coersed and fiddled and finally all is functioning in a usable manner.
What all this has to do with a photograph of a Prickly Pear - I have absolutely no idea…
I didn’t surf today.
I can count the days I’ve spent surfing this year using the contents of my pants. This is not a good statistic.
Life has been bowling me along for months in a dusty cloud of cement and sawdust and surfing has been slipping deeper into my mind. So deep that somedays it becomes a strange daydream about a life I thought about once.
Luckily I have a friend who is a mentalist. Not a total nutter who is prone to bouts of certifiable insanity that teeters on the brink of social disorder (although on reflection he has the capability of all of this) but a controller of minds using nothing but his intellect and wisdom…
Phone rings…
DB: Hey Sharky (his pet name for me)
Me: Hey Dolphin Boy (likewise)
DB: Did you know that I’m clairvoyant and that I know what you’re doing tomorrow morning…
…enigmatic pause…
Me: Tiling the bathroom?
DB: Nope.
Me: Sanding the study ceiling?
DB: Nah.
Me: I give up.
DB: Going surfing with me at Cabadelo…
The spooky thing was… he was completely right. I did. And it was gooood….
I surfed today. Thank you kindly DB - I muchly needed that.
I’ve been looking at a lot of skateboards recently - the gorgeous Tango gave me the fantastic Whirling Dervish to stretch my learning curve on but I also wanted a board with a tail to replace my battered old shortboard - something a bit longer and wider (and slower to lower my skin graft to ride ratio). The ideal board looked like the Loaded Ceviche but at over £275 for a complete set up it seemed a tad on the dear side.
So I rummaged around in the loft, pulled out a few old floorboards, a pair of old disco skates and some slightly used chewing gum and threw ‘the Gekko’ together. It rolls. It turns. It does everything it’s supposed to. Very happy with it indeed…
So in my effort to overturn the current economic crisis I have decided to make more. It’s the obvious solution to a malaise that is sweeping the globe. Why sit indoors watching Susan Boyle on Youtube when you can charge down the nearest hill on a longboard and throw yourself into some tarmac?
In addition to the surfy/snowboardy emulator pictured above I shall be making a meranti/epoxy laminated flex carver and a downhill deck (website and prototypes available soonish).
Building skateboards might not make me a millionaire but it’s better than real life…
I didn’t surf today but I will be whirling my Dervish.
…please send answers on a postcard to the ‘Penfold doesn’t know what to write about competition’.
Prizes may include:
- A post dedicated to you.
- A pair of DaddyP’s underpants (chemically cleaned by professionals).
- A free subscription to Twitter.
- Private surf lessons from Tango in a bikini.
- Breast enhancement surgery from the Penfold carpentry workshop.
Of course several of the above answers may be unavailable at any particular time for any number of reasons. For example - DaddyP may not actually own a single pair of underpants and be going ‘commando’ for all eternity - scrotum and trouser gusset in perfect harmony. Twitter may already be free and widely available to any idiot out there with the will to wiffle wantonly and Tango in a bikini may only be available if I were to win my own competition (but that may be construed as ‘insider trading’).
So if the post dedication seems unsuitable then I would be quite happy to knock you up a pair of splintery wooden norks out of some old floorboards and a selection of rusty 4″ nails…
I didn’t surf today.
It’s been a somewhat disheartening week in Surfugal. Five months out of the sea has left me very unfit - not so much physically (as the building site fun keeps my body parts vaguely functional) but more spiritually flaccid. When you are surfing you need to be bright and alert as large volumes of water are falling towards you but something has gone astray. My mojo has been slightly dented.
Four days went by. Paddling furiously at nothing or taking closeouts on the head. Being overwhelmed by the people jostling on the main peak rather than just getting stuck in and having my turn. Endless waves either passed me by or shoved me into the sand…
On wednesday evening, Tim (on a much earned break from Paddle4relief) dragged me out to the reef at Lagide. There were just a few people sitting out back with small head high sets coming through…
Again my mojo seemed to be absent, a few fumbled take offs and a couple on the head then eventually a wave lifted up off the reef and my board locked into it. The fear and trepidation of the last few days washed out of my body as my feet hit the deck and I raced down the face. A deep bottom turn and up up over the lip - as the sun dipped below the Peniche skyline and I paddled in there was finally a small smile on my face.
I was due back on Wednesday night - meetings with my solicitor and accountant were scheduled for the morning but the weather and swell were brewing for a perfect day of surf so I made the only sensible choice available for a man of my discerning years and went straight to the bar.
A wise choice was made - on thursday morning Tim and myself paddled out at Secrets on our own. Any surfer who has had a ‘classic’ session will know what happened that day. Beautiful sets of clean, peeling waves held open by a light offshore lifted perfectly again and again over the small reef strips. I relished in watching Tim slot his 9′2″ into several loverly barrels in between washing away the demons of the last few months on my own gorgeous waves…
I surfed on Thursday. Smiling yesterday. Still smiling today…
(more pics at flickr)
I didn’t surf yet this morning. Got to go now - 6 foot, offshore and clean…
Language is a tricky thing. The subtle nuances of a native tongue can take more than a lifetime to master and the challenge of mastering a second or even third can be almost insurmountable. Some people have a natural flair for it - they can hear a word and it is immediately available for use in their vocabulary and others aren’t so lucky (’carbonara’ can be a tricky word - can’t it DP?).
I’ve been attending an ‘advanced’ Portuguese conversation class for a while (slightly misnamed as several of the students couldn’t Portuguese their way out of ‘um sacinho de papel molhado’) which is a somewhat random meandering through the grammatical paths of Portuguese and English. We spend half the lesson speaking Portuguese (as we should) and the other half debating why the 2 nations can’t both speak English or at least reinvent Portuguese so it makes more sense to foreigners (go home you cerebrally challenged freaks).
Of course the teacher is fluent in both but occasionally has to question the colloquialisms that befuddle her. Towards the end of yesterdays lesson she wrote on the board…
“TO GIVE SOMEONE HEAD” and innocently asked the class “can anyone tell me what this means?”
I didn’t surf today. Too busy sniggering in the back row…
The majority of people cruising into middle-age might mark the transition with an instigation of a pension plan or buying some nice brown slacks. I realised today that I may be in the midst of some form of denial period of my life and although my cranial follicle count is dwindling on a daily basis and my previously ginger beard is thankfully turning grey I still believe myself to be in my late teens.
I have decided to confront my current dilemma with a very important compromise to my previously youthful exuberence and have been shopping online for a new skateboard. No longer shall I be riding a 29″ x 8″ deck with 50mm hard wheels but am buying an old man’s cruiser with a 38″ x 9.25″ deck bearing 60mm soft wheels. Bearing in mind that I am a truly rubbish skater this is a very sensible and mature move.
I no longer bounce when I hit concrete - just a dull thudding noise followed by a small whimper.
Other modifications to ease the passage into the twilight years of my life shall include having less tattoos done this year, paying my tax bill and eating slightly more leafy, green salads.
Sorted.
I didn’t surf today. I fear I may be repeating myself.
