Grey Skies, Green Waves

by Tom Anderson

  Getting ready for my heat it crossed my mind for a moment to try this unorthodox technique, but pride

  intercepted the idea. If I couldn't make it by surfing properly, then I wouldn't make it at all.

  As the field of almost a hundred began to whittle down, the usual mutinous atmosphere began to ferment. By half-eleven several surfers had uttered one of the essential lines, without which a British surf contest is not officially underway:

  'Beginning to wonder why I fuckin' bothered with this crap…'

  This was followed, of course, by a chorus of approval:

  'Nah, me neither. Too cold. Shite waves. Every other weekend sportsman in the country's feeling more comfortable than us right now, I bet you.'

  'Got that right, like.'

  As always a round of silence followed it, before, 'When's your next heat then?'

  'Dunno. You?'

  Shrug of shoulders. 'Might go look in a minute.'

  We all knew when our next heats were, but this is part of the bullshit banter that everyone loves to fall comfortably into.

  Round two was more of the same, with each of us visitors sneaking through before Terry announced that the field had been sufficiently whittled down to finish the event that day (without needing the Sunday), as long as things kept going this smoothly. It would of course mean using every second of daylight, as well as pushing the presentation well into the evening. All convinced of our chances, this sounded like a plan, and as two more rounds passed by without hiccup all three of us began to develop the tunnel vision of surfers who are getting into a proper contest rhythm. (While Andrew and Al had also begun thinking about their chances of scooping a team prize.)

  That's a common experience for many competitive surfers – that rhythm as the heats get closer and more serious in nature – but not for me. I'd been involved in the business end of a contest draw far too seldom for my liking and was really relishing a quarter-final heat in marginally improving conditions.

  High tide had pulled a little more water over what precious little sandbanks existed here, meaning small gaps had started to show in the total close-outs of the early rounds. It was still verging on the unsurfable, but every now and then, if you positioned yourself intelligently, it was possible to sneak on to a little bit of running wave face and some were even affording the opportunity to do a couple of half-decent manoeuvres.

  I squeezed, wincing with cold, into my soaking wetsuit for what would, either way, be the last time that day. If I got through this heat, the semi would follow so quickly it wasn't worth coming back up to the car to get changed.

  During the afternoon, for some inexplicable reason, Terry had decided to move the contest area a hundred yards north along the beach. With every point along the sands producing identical waves, the only excuse I could see for this was that the rising tide had brought the surfers closer to the judges. Perhaps wanting to keep things difficult, he'd thought it fit to move us further away again.

  Adding to the rather peculiar judging situation, it was also threatening to get dark at the earliest possible moment. The sun had barely come up at all that day anyway and therefore slipping from day back to night seemed something the sky was ready to do as and when it pleased – regardless of whether or not Terry had finished running the event.

  As it happened, I soon realised that even the onset of night wouldn't dissuade him. Calling everything off prematurely for bad light was beginning to look like a real possibility as I walked past the misted-up windscreen of the van through which the judges intended to watch, and hopefully reward, my imminent demolition of the waves below. I paused to ask them for the heat times and wave-count limit, causing one of the judges to wind a side window down – about which he was less than pleased. A whiff of something funky caught my nostrils as smoke poured out of the cockpit, and I immediately realised why he resented the interruption.

  'Er, sorry,' I said, before I posed my contest questions.

  'Dunno,' was the reply.

  'I see. And any idea what colour I am?' I asked – referring to the vests that competitors would wear over their wetsuits in a heat, in order to allow the judges to distinguish between them impartially.

  'Nope. Ask Terry.'

  'Where is he?'

  'No idea.'

  Someone had ridden a wave during this conversation without being scored – as a result of my enquiry – but it was Al so I didn't mind. We'd reached the stage at which he was now a rival, and would probably be just as happy himself to throw loyalty out the window.

  Terry, as luck would have it, was at the water's edge. He seemed the most in control he'd been all day as he handed me a white vest (second only in visibility to the red one – so a good one to draw in this impending twilight) and warned me that my heat was starting in fifty seconds. This was nowhere near enough time to get back out, but it didn't matter as none of the other three guys in my heat had made it down yet either.

  I magnanimously accepted the vest and started paddling out to surf against myself for a place in the semi-finals; a reasonably inviting prospect.

  As dusk enveloped us all, I took off on my first wave and stuck in two turns as well as a few wiggles in the white water. Encouraged by a good start, I paddled back out and repeated the process a few more times – before two of my other competitors eventually began making their way out about halfway through the heat. Two other surfers, meanwhile, had drifted into the line-up, both on longboards, both barely able to paddle in a straight line let alone ride waves. Very inexperienced surfers are often the hardest to deal with when they get stuck in a drift and arrive in your heat so, not wanting any kind of run-in, I made my way a little further up the beach.

  It was at about the halfway point in the heat that I saw a pair of headlights come on back at the car park. This, I would later learn, was the judges attempting to improve their ability to see the line-up. Even if it had worked though, I'm not sure if it would have done anything to the result – which with only a few minutes to go was obviously going to go in my favour. As heats went, I'd surfed a blinder, steadily building an account of solid waves. There was another guy in the heat from Plymouth Uni, who I was certain had also advanced, while the other two had picked up nothing after their late arrival. One of them was a local – one of the 'students' Terry had admitted into the event because they were probably studying an A level one night a week in a local college, but it didn't matter – both had been comprehensively beaten. Or so we thought.

  Walking back up the beach to turn our vests in to Terry, the Plymouth surfer cemented my ideas.

  'What d'you reckon then, mate? You and me through in that one, eh? Looks like those two didn't catch anything…'

  'Yeah, seems that way,' I confirmed. 'We managed to stay clear of the free surfers too, eh?' I nodded dismissively towards the two beginners who'd floated through the line-up – one of whom was also making his way in to the beach with the two local competitors.

  We stopped to talk for a minute, watching the waves we expected to be paddling back into shortly, generally feeling pretty happy with things. This allowed the other surfers to make their way past us, to be the first to hear from Terry the results that had apparently already been radioed down from the judges' van. When the beginner clenched his fist in glory and shook Terry's hand, we realised something a little untoward was going on.

  'What's he on?' I laughed, as we neared the contest director, who was gesturing urgently for our vests. In the darkening evening, I spotted something awkward in his eyes.

  'Got the result?'

  'Yeah, er, hard lines, fellas,' he replied.

  'Sorry – come again?' I said in disbelief.

  'Great surfing, boys. I'm sorry, though. It's so competitive at this stage, eh? You must be really pleased anyway.'

  'You what?'

  'Great run you were on. It's those two over there who made it this time, though. Close heat.'

  My jaw dropped with indignant horror. He was pointing at the longboarder that had drift
ed into the contest area and who'd made us laugh by that fist clench only a moment ago. I'd seen the guy paddle into a wave and stand up for about half a second before falling off the nose. Not only was he not even part of the event, but this guy could barely surf – and that's being kind.

  'He wasn't in the heat,' I said.

  'No, no, what we do, you see,' Terry smiled placidly, 'is we run a ranking system so he came in through another heat. We didn't have a spare vest to judge him in, so he was written down as black on the judges' sheets.' The colour system existed to foster anonymous judging, in theory. The 'surfer in black' was so named because he wasn't wearing any colour – which as far as I was concerned meant he wasn't in the event.

  I was ready to throw a tantrum. 'In black?'

  'Aye, you know – like a fifth man.'

  'But only four people had qualified for that heat? Who was he?'

  'No. There were five out there. Hard lines, like I said. Normally we put three competitors through to the next round from a five-man heat, but coz we're short on time it's only gonna be two today. Sorry, boys. We'll have a fun night tonight, though. Beer's cheap again!'

  I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was a debacle.

  'What are we gonna do?' I asked the Plymouth surfer. He just shrugged his shoulders and said he'd heard of this kind of thing happening here before.

  'But we can't let them pull this shit,' I pleaded.

  'What option have we got?'

  'But it's a complete fix!' I yelled.

  I wanted to smash something, to hit someone or to throw a tirade of abuse, but the fact that I was stuck on a beach I hardly knew robbed me of the confidence I needed. Instead I ran back to the car park, past the judges (who were now on the beers too), to find Al and Andrew – maybe if we all got together to file some kind of complaint…

  They were both dressed again, with their surfing stuff packed away.

  'What's going on? Aren't you still in?' I asked.

  'Nope,' Andrew frowned. 'We're both very much not still in. Al just got skunked by the worst judging decision ever made, while I missed my heat because it came forward half an hour.'

  By now I realised we'd been had.

  'They're down to the semis now and it's locals only left in the event.' Andrew folded his arms, resigned to what had happened. 'We've been done over. It's our fault for coming here and taking it so seriously. Not only is the joke on us, but we're helping make it funnier too.'

  He was right – there was nothing we could do. All options available to us would run to dead ends. Taking off home in a mood would make us look like spoilt prima donnas from the photo-slut, big-business surf towns, where everyone supposedly surfed for image and success came easily. Staying and playing along with it all would be humiliating, not to mention lining Terry's pockets further. Andrew suggested, half-seriously, that we stick around, get steaming drunk and pick a fight – but even that desperate measure would surely result in us simply getting a hiding. The facts were simple: we'd trekked into parts of Britain that didn't have a surfing establishment in an attempt to clean up at the prize-giving and were being sent home with our tails between our legs.

  'Sod it,' I said, opening my boot and throwing my board over the passenger seat. 'I'm getting changed and gonna go watch the final. Then I'm driving home to laugh about it tomorrow morning in Rest Bay with my mates, while remembering what surfing's really about.'

  'Easy now,' Al laughed. 'Dunno about the watching the final bit…'

  'Why not?'

  'Well, I mean, it's not exactly the ASP World Tour out there, is it? And you did say the guy who won it last year allegedly sealed it with some kind of odd falling-off thing that Terry didn't know how to describe. You know dodgy judging happens in places like this. And don't forget with the tide dropping out it's about a mile back to the water's edge, which is the only place you're gonna see anything from.' Al had a point.

  'Fair enough. Maybe I'll just go now then.'

  It was Andrew who came up with a fitting compromise though.

  'Nah – let's just get the grandstand view from here,' he suggested, smirking. 'It's fuckin' freezing anyway, so let's just hang out in the cars with the heaters running and watch what we can. I mean, if it's good enough for the judges…' Turning his key, his old estate spluttered, struggling to come to life in the cold, before revving triumphantly. He lifted the front seats forward and invited me to jump in.

  It was ridiculous but, as if the ceremony of it would somehow make a difference, we settled down to try and observe the remaining surfing. The dark was now so absorbing that headlights actually made it harder to see. We turned them off again and spent the last half hour of the day – which was supposed to have been our swan song together – peering farcically in the direction of the sea. Instead of revelling in the success we'd expected to be our entitlement, we shivered, listening to the drunken giggles of the judges as they apparently ignored any idea of there being a final in the water in front of them.

  This was actually the perfect way to see out the last moments of the silliest surfing contest yet to be found in this country of bizarre events and wacky surf clubs. Participating in that final would have been nowhere near as much fun.

  And anyway we wanted to stick around to root for the new event favourite; the mysterious longboarder who had dispatched me, the uber-competitive wannabe, so calmly in the quarters.

  'I reckon he's got the win in the bag,' said Andrew, gesturing into the gloom through which even the shoreline was now barely discernable. 'There was something about him, man. You could see that he was a winner from the off. He's given you your medicine and now he's gonna nail the rest of the field as well.'

  Naturally, he did nothing much. We were backing the wrong silhouette – as we had been all weekend, for that matter.

  Who the eventual winner was, we did not stick around to witness; a long, dark drive back through the winter night beckoning instead. The roads wound slowly away from Newgale's beaches and their bubble. Time seemed to slow, before empty dual carriageways flanked by farmland began to be punctuated by roundabouts and retail outlets. Everything about those reaches of West Wales felt designed to make the place appear isolated and remote, especially as winter set in. The car heaters offered consolation, as the lights of Carmarthen passed by to my left and then Cross Hands with its infamous McDonald's – whose curved tables and taunting comfort food had provided the setting for so many melancholy post-Nationals debriefs. This time I didn't even stop.

  Andrew and Al whizzed past me as the M4 finally started – they had hours further to drive than me. From here the riveted, flaming illuminations of Port Talbot's vast steelworks and coke furnaces began the alluring countdown to home – placing a time limit on what had been a reflective drive through the encroaching cold.

  If anything, I thought, as these sights I knew by heart drew me towards the exit for Porthcawl and home, this could be yet another trip to add to the list of those that served to remind me how removed from the day-to-day routine I could still get, even in my own country, and of the insignificance of my surfing community once you were only a few miles away from it. It also made me wonder, as so often before, about the apparent futility of trying to compete sometimes – until I started chuckling aloud to myself about the comical improbability of where I'd just been and what had happened there.

  Since then I had of course repeated yet more similar drives back from West Wales with the whole range of post-competition emotions (minus the ecstasy of victory, of course). But that trip to Nolton Haven and Newgale remained in my memory as a classic case of that quandary I'd lived with for so long in my life as a British surfer. That struggle for meaning; which, in the next few months of my life, I was hoping would finally start to get me somewhere.

  As memory allowed my understanding of that trip to sharpen, I realised that, for all the humour and folly of that naïve jaunt taken in search of what at best would have merely been an unfulfilling ego-boost, there was one thing I'd comp
letely forgotten to do and that was appreciate the adventure, change of scenery and break from the norm that such a trip could offer. If the chance to go to an event like that ever arose again, I needed to make more of it.

  Adventure, mishap and discovery were always closer and more readily available than first presumed. I just needed to remember that – and to be willing to look for it.

  CHAPTER 5

  CARDIFF'S SUBURBAN SECRET SPOT