lennox head is for learners.

Lennox Head was about 4′ on Tuesday and very soft with the standard reforms in front of the hotel, that’s where the local surfing talent was – about six of them. Various cruisers were surfing up and down the beach, and way up at the northern headland you could see the occasional silver flash as George G. reeled in an even bigger dinner.

– and the surf school, about twenty students in the water. Two blokes in charge. We have all seen these schools, you should try working in one and see all your mates downgrade their relationships with you. They do this because they know .. they know because it’s wrong.

This Tuesday there was a lot going wrong – this is surfer talking to surfer here, this is you and me  –

Lesson 1 : It’s ok to ride a delaminated board.

A man could stand rooted to the sand all day watching this blasphemy; fascinated. The lady was convinced that she had spent her money wisely by being taught that it’s ok to surf on a delaminated board in three inches of water. About 4″ of flap was hanging off underside the nose. What mutated train of logic could rationalise those polemics. What degraded sense of surfing values is this young lady from Tokyo going to take back to her 29th floor apartment in Shinagawa.

This was not only a serious lack of basic instinct being displayed here by the two lads doing the coaching – we’ll call them Des and Ben –  this was also evidence of a lack of spending on the boards. The partnerships’ assets, their working capital.

Surfboard in working condition = money. This is not a concept that requires any further explanation. This is also why so many mature surfers are on the bones of their arse because that’s what happens when you blow your fortune out of it.

So how hard is it to the fix dings on those marshmellows ? Lets’s take a walk through the business numbers.

Twenty kooks by $65 per each per one day is $1,300 all up, then that by about 40 days in summer is $52,000 split two ways with not a lot of incriminating paperwork to worry the tax office and there’s no budget to fix dings .. ?!  It’s all about the Mentawis isn’t it Des, isn’t it Ben? Not to mention the large babe opportunity that renews itself every day.

Let’s do those sums. Twenty kooks a day; at 13:7 babe to bozo ratio (we’ve done the research) that’s 13 different babes per day by 40 days is 520 foreign lovelies every season and you have them for six hours on day one.

All that cash, all those ladies – somebody spell hedonist for me. Byron Pays.

Lesson 2 : It’s ok to look relatively uncool.

Des and Ben are managing twenty kooks on twenty boards in the last fifty feet of wave wash before the water disappears down those holes the crabs make. Everyone is crowded up so that the Personal Training Lesson Learner 13 is getting will be hopefully overheard by Learners 3,7, and 19 who are in the close vicinity, who are wallowing in the close vicinity.

Watching a woman wearing a bikini struggle to her feet after being turned over a few times in a foot of water with a board weighing about 10 kgs tied to her ankle is like watching a woman in her underwear get out of a wet bed after a walrus fell onto it and rolled over her. It’s unnerving.

Lesson 3 : It’s ok to ride up onto the sand.

Watching someone ride a board all the way up to the point where the fin begins to carve a groove in the sand is like sitting astride a moving razorblade with no trousers on. There’s this visceral tension because when the board jerks to a stop the learner continues on for a little while until the leg rope yanks back a leg. Then it’s a flailing face-plant onto the board, or the edge of the board, or the wet sand. Possibly all three. In off the cushion. The 1st aid kit is in the van.

Des and Ben are ok with this though, it’s cool, nobody is drowning. The water is only knee deep.

Lesson 4 : It’s ok to jump off a board anytime.

The learner, a big florid fellow on loan from some Public School in Rugby has his board slew around a little sideways so over he goes like a condemned camphor laurel between the wave and the beach. Public School has two seconds to get out of the way of his board. He doesn’t make it, they never do. It’s hard not to cheer.

Lesson 5 : It’s ok to stop a board rolling towards you with your hands.

It’s always a small woman who falls into this trap. A small delicate woman with manicured hands. That’s what the board hits first on its way to the rest of her body.

However there is another train of thought.

Des and Ben are teaching kooks to be super-kooks, they are instilling such a worthless set of surfing disciplines into these wretched tourists there is no chance they will ever take up the game. Thanks to D&B they have it all wrong.

So how bad can it be to have thousands of Japanese and Brasilians going home with no earthly idea as to how to ride a wave or walk the walk?  They might even pass it onto their children – like a virus. All they really need to do is buy the corporation’s branded surf kit so that they look like a surfer and everybody’s happy.

So it’s well done Des and Ben.

header painting by charlotte russell