the solution to being a very old ex-surfer
I have some fine friends in Avalon, friends not being the old LA Mafia, a goodly bunch of gentlemen indeed who must now all be in their seventies and some of whom I’m told are no longer in prime surfing condition. However, one of the finer types rang me this morning for a word or two, Cookie, friend of the Missile, associate of Mike Marylin Mitton, colleague of Stumpy and Wazza and one of the number of no-hopers who gather around a coffee table at Avalon most mornings and frighten the horses.
The bullshit they spread, I’m reliably informed, is thick enough to bottle and sell as peanut butter.
Cookie goes way back, waaaaay back to Byron in the early sixties when I was there with MickT, funny though how I don’t remember him … but I do remember a lanky looking kid with square shoulders and long hair trying to convince the Keever brothers that the only reason he fell off so much at the Pass was because of the distractions he had to deal with in the water, like Wendy, and Denice, and Elaine.
They distracted me as well, but usually at night.
Nowadays a man too old to catch waves just wanders up and down the local beach fossicking, loading his pockets with all manner of things but always with an objective in mind.
The beach rewards those who love it, especially the wilder ones open to southerly gales, those long deserted stretches of golden sands.
The ants come from Hong Kong, the bird from the UK, the chest from my sister, the cuttings from the SMH, the cuttings letters to the editor circa 1970. The rounded stones and shell the result of who knows how many years of being ground down by the sea and sand.
Coral fish from Indo, spirula from Palm Beach, mangrove pods from the Richmond River .. sand from Lighthouse Beach.
petebowes.com 