In his experience there really is no substitute for experience; particularly his. All those winters back when wetsuits were made from barbed wire and asbestos (if you were lucky), when boards were simultaneously awful but also somehow great. Alas, the mental gymnastics he performs to sustain his seemingly contradictory moral and spiritual positions on modern surfriding far exceeds any actual gymnastics, well certainly since that last keyhole knee surgery. Not that that incident at the skatepark is even his fault; back in his day they’d never have let razor scooter kids stand at the top of the ramp, let alone get in the way.  

What with work, kids, the time demands of various mid-life crisis (triathlon, custom moto-bikes, jiu-jitsu, mindfullness) he simply doesn’t have enough hours in the day to leave his surfing fortunes to the whims of swell, wind, tide, sand shape and crowd. Hence The Wave fetish. He doesn’t know what Bantham is going to be like in precisely three months on Tuesday at 11am, and frankly my dear, he doesn’t care; all he needs is a team of Wavemakers, a rashie over his wetsuit, and seventy quid for an hour wiggling grey 2fters. Best move he’s managed to get on lock, in return for all those years dedicated to shred? Solid roundhouse? Stylish bottom turn? Weirdly, it’s the semi-ironic freshwater head dip, reposted from Tristan’s stories. You don’t have to be bald/thinning, mid-size SUV driving, Slater Designs bat tail wielding, and on average 43.5 yeas old to help save the planet and promote much better #mentalhealth by mainly driving up the M5 and surfing a concreted over field outside Bristol, but Ziggy says there’s a 99% you are. Ziggy? Oh never mind. It was a TV show, there were only 4 channels, e-commerce was something Scousers did to pay for their Ibiza trips. You had to be there, really.

As for his quiver, he’s something of a completist. He’s got the entire range of Sex Wax scented camper van candles, and no less than 2 back up wettie buckets. In all seriousness though, one of the things about modern consumer society he can’t get his head around is choice paralysis, from there just being so much out there. He suffers from no such affliction, because that tricky choice between the Go Fish and the Seaside & Beyond is a false dichotomy. It’s obviously both.