Charlie don't surf. Nor do I, alas.
Michael McMahon on Newquay
In Newquay, women are taking their clothes off in the streets. Men are too, mind, though I find this less of a distraction. My brother John, who lives on the edge of town, doesn't seem to notice - though he does notice that I have noticed, and points out that I would look a little more dignified if my tongue weren't hanging out. People drive for miles to surf here, he explains, and if I had ever tried to get into a wetsuit sitting in a Ford Fiesta, I would know why they choose to get changed beside their cars before they grab their boards from the roof-racks and make their excited, rubber-suited beelines for the beach.
Surfing is not, alas, a field in which I have great expertise, though I do know that Apocalypse Now contains the line ‘Charlie don’t surf’, and I have a mirror in my bathroom, so I know why fat unfit men in their fifties don’t surf. But John is two years and three stone younger than me, and has ridden the waves since he was a teenager. And as we stand on the cliff-top watching the figures rolling and riding, padding and paddling on the seascape and sandscape below, I realise all too late that surfing is fun.
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