bloke down there, drowning
Facebook is for women and girls, it’s the pancake makeup of all social media. Everyone is covered.
Because everyone has friends, and surfers have friends. There’s this fellow from Avalon who is friendly with about five of my friends. He’s a big fellow, rides a big yellow board at Avalon.
Roy.
That guy.
He’s up on the FB border everytime I log in, Roy’s little pic and this wheezy unregulated invitation – ‘ Do you wanna be Roy’s friend?’
Fucksake NO!
You see, FB has no sense of surfing etiquette, some guys you talk to when you meet them, others you blow past.
Well some of Roys’ mates are premium blowbys, which means no matter how much you think that the bloke is worth in an intimate FB hookup, which is plenty for Roy L – because he’s a lad – you get to share everything you say to him with all his friends, half of whom need the final life-ending needle, and all of whom would be looking over your shoulder as you chat with Roy. If he was your friend. Which he is in reality, but no way on FB .
It’s like having a birthday party and inviting everybody who doesn’t like you.
Real friends are different, like Mike O’Irish for instance. This is the bloke who, as a pimpled youth, paddled a bark coracle out to some fishing boat huddle in the middle of the Irish Sea, way to buggery out there, and he thought that they’d be happy to see him.
One thing about the Irish fisherman, their fuck off is as good as ours, so Mike did. Fuck off. As told.
And he landed in Warriewood and bought a wave-ski. This was when those degenerate windmilling bastards were flowering in their thousands, so Mike had a lot of friends. Like Phil Avalon, that name is reason enough to re-invigorate fascism. Him and Mel Gibson, and Summer City the movie.
The movie of a thousand cringes.
Until the day.
Warriewood is not a fancied break, despite the Boof revelations the surf is shit – mostly. This particular day had a handful of O’Irish’s boardriding friends loitering by the carpark rail up top, all sucking back choc milkshakes and scarfing Norms’ hamburgers while they watched an ocean of mess unload down on the beach. Plus a little ammonia on the wind. Septic city.
This is what we lived with. Hardnuts all.
There were about ten out, all of them from Pymble and none of them with a hope. And here’s O’Irish upended on the rocks just a little offshore in the corner; upside down – tied onto his wave-ski, possibly drowning.
Flailing away like a cockroach upside down in a bath. Everytime he looked like he would flip the ski over another wave hammered on by and denied him breath.
This was Mike, on his way to death or glory. So we just watched on as he attempted to flip himself upright and away from the rocks that were tearing the skin from his arms and legs, as he switched get over techniques from forehand to backhand and bent his paddle against the undersea boulders that bumped and banged against his head. It was like a classroom demo ..
The Rule is: if you don’t know, don’t go.
The Other Rule is: one less out is one better.
– and friendships need testing, this the ocean provides.
petebowes.com 
It is a wise man who knows who his Dad is and a lucky one who knows who his mates really are. As me old pal Ned said, “Such is life”!
I said to him, ‘ you wanna go?’ and he looked at it out there, thundering away, and back at me, and said, ‘ only if you do.’
Me and Mike O’Irish, born to it.