When I’ve got the wetsuit on I come out and the others are still choosing their boards with Wayne. It’s only James and Oscar, and me and Lily who are surfing, the others have gone to sit on the beach. James and Oscar get their boards first, both taking a while to inspect the shortboard-style surfboards, but while I’m waiting I see there’s a rack of paddleboards as well, and I surprise myself by asking Wayne if it’s OK for me to take one of those instead. It surprises Lily too, since she asks why. I explain that, when the waves are small like today, it’s much easier and you can catch far more waves on a paddleboard. And then Lily looks interested in that and says she’ll do the same. So a few minutes later the four of us traipse over the road and down onto the sand. Eric and Jennifer are stretched out on the sand. They’ve got a sun umbrella from somewhere, though you don’t really need it today. Eric gives us a wolf-whistle as we walk past them. Actually I get a weird feeling he’s giving me a wolf-whistle.
I feel a bit odd as we walk down to the water. It’s hard to explain exactly why, but it’s like there’s a meeting of two worlds. Or maybe more than two. When I was a kid I was really scared of the water, I mean properly terrified. And I had a good reason, since my Mom tried to drown me when I was a baby. But when I got over that I started surfing loads with Dad, and diving, and swimming and kayaking, and all sorts really. So now I feel very relaxed in the water, like I’m at home here. And I can see easily that Lily and James and Oscar don’t – they’re not holding their boards the right way, they didn’t even know how to zip up their wetsuits (when I was younger they all had the zips on the back, but now they’re always on the front). But at the same time, I keep expecting James or Lily to ask me a question about French impressionist painters, or snooker, or something that they all know about, and I don’t. So it’s a weird mix, if you know what I mean.
We wade out into the waves. It’s still warm. James and Oscar lay on their boards and start paddling, and I jump up onto my feet on the paddleboard and start to use the long paddle to push me along. It’s a really big board, and totally stable – I’ve got one at home that’s about half the size, and I don’t fall off that one either – but next to me Lily watches what I do and tries to do the same, but she tips forwards, and screams and falls right off, feet flying everywhere as she splashes into the water. From the shore I hear Eric calling out and laughing.
I’m a bit mortified, but she surfaces, looking shocked for a moment, before breaking into a smile, her hair plastered onto her face. She tries again, while I stop paddling and just wait where I am. She falls a second time. Still I wait there, turning to face the swells as they come in, so they don’t knock me off.
“How do you do that?” She asks in the end, she’s puffing from the effort of it.
“You just…” I try and think. “You just stand on it.” It really isn’t hard, not once you get used to it.
She tries again, but falls again, and she isn’t smiling as much now, so I suggest she stays on her knees until she gets out through the waves where it will be calmer and easier. Then when that doesn’t work either, I help her. I get off my board and let it trail out behind me, secured by the leash, and I push hers from the back until we’re through the section on the break where the waves are breaking. All the while Lily is kneeling on her board, and helping a bit with her paddle. Eventually I get her into the lineup – that’s the part where you wait to catch waves, just further out from where they break. Here it’s easy, because the water stays flat. And here I give her a proper lesson, showing her how to get to her feet, while using the paddle to keep her balance. I show her the right place to stand on the board, and how to turn it. And it’s easy – because paddle boarding is easy – that’s why all the celebrities do it. Soon she gets the hang of it, and we paddle back towards where James and Oscar are waiting, and she calls out to them, saying ‘look at me!’, and I can see she’s having fun again.
When a nice set of waves comes in I let James and Oscar take the first ones, because that’s kind of the polite thing to do, and I watch them too. They both get to their feet, but they don’t have the smooth, fluid style that the Lornea Island surfers do, like Dad and his friends. Instead they lurch up, knocking the boards from their path down the waves. Then they sort of
