20 Reasons why dating a surfer is a stinking pile of pish.

21. Almost forgot. Your children will be indoctrinated too.

Right then. Let’s get straight down to business. I have read a few silly things recently. One of them was an article with the headline  “20 Reasons Dating a Surfer is Like Winning the Lottery”. I posted it to facebook and got an immediate comment from Mrs D that perhaps there were some important details missing. She’s right. Dating a surfer in Hawaii might well be like winning the lottery if he’s loaded and gorgeous and you don’t have to work and he’s got his own personal make up artist and photographer to make him look ‘kewl’ every time he sits in the line up. However, boys and girls, we don’t live in Hawaii. We live in northern Europe.

And what follows, my friends, is the absolute fucking god’s honest truth.

1. There is a stinking pile of pish in the bathroom. It’s not him after a night out at Caesar’s in Bideford. It’s the wetsuit, your rival for his affections. He pisses in it, even though he says he doesn’t. And it stinks up your bathroom, shower, hallway, car. Everything. It’s a stinking pile of pish and he puts it on.
2. There is a headless man in the bathroom every time you go to the loo in the middle of the night. It’s that stinking pile of pish again, only this time it is on a hanger hanging from the shower cubicle and it scares the shit out of you every time you go into the bathroom.
3.  You will never see the Greek Islands. If you don’t know that by now you are seriously deluded.  Ok, you might just score a weekend of snorkelling, but only when all the other holidays – sorry, surf trips - have been had. This will never happen btw.
4. If you do ever get to Greece he will annoy the shit out of you. Why? Because beaches without waves are boring and he’s bored and there’s nothing to do why the fuck are we here? Christ already, didn’t you realise that when you booked that weekend snorkelling trip to Lesbos? He only came because the name sounded interesting. Get over it.
5. You will get wetsuits. Yes, you will get wetsuits. You might not get a pair of Uggs for your birthday (which you really wanted) but you will never be short of a wetsuit. That way he feels less guilty about buying his. And you’ll get to share his dream… (really sorry Joanne)
6. You will have no money. This is either because you move to the coast where there is no work or because it’s all spent on travel and weekends at the coast. When you do get money it will go on wetsuits for you.
7. You will have a shit car that is full of shit. You will share your vehicle with beach litter (‘saving the planet’ he calls it), wax on the headrests (from stashing boards wax side down), sand, stinking piles of pish, leashes, decomposing shorts, scratched sunnies and an old tape of the Hoodoo Gurus that he can’t bear to throw away.
8. If you ever get enough money to buy a car that isn’t shit, you will get a 4x4. Because it’ll be great for ragging down to Spekes. You lot know who you are. In 3 months it’ll be dirty and full of shit just like the last one and you’ll have no money anyway.
9. He will become an environmentalist. Oh for fuck’s sake. Yep. You’ll get a garden full of shit from the beach and will have to attend lots of beach cleans. You will never have a romantic stroll on the beach again because he’ll be looking for sodding Lego all the time (or is it just me?).
10. You will have to learn to ignore rashes that look like love bites. They are from wetsuits rubbing, not any other kind of rubbing. Who would want a stinking pile of pish like him in their lives anyway? More fool you. He ain’t having an affair with anybody but the ocean.
11. You will get woken at dawn. But it’s not what you think. He’s pissing about loading up the shitty car with his boards and can’t be quiet about it. It’s almost like he wants a medal for being such a warrior. All you want to do is go back to sleep. And by 7.30 that night - when you're all awake - he’ll be asleep on the sofa.
12. He’s a flipping misery unless it’s going off. Then you won’t see him. This is one positive aspect of the whole situation I suppose:  he’s fucked off again to go surfing. Then again, if it’s not that it’s that he’s fucked off again ‘cos there’s no surf.
13. Movie night is crap. You’ll have to learn to love Big Wednesday. “I swear, and don’t know who it was if it wasn’t me, but I never pissed in your steam iron.” It’s the height of culture donchaknow. Get to know the quotes or you won’t have any idea what he’s on about. “I hear you’re having a party Jack.”
14. You’ll see a lot of shitty waves and inside of lots of tubes (which is more than he will). You’ll watch endless tubes from a GoPro in Namibia or from George Greenough in the 70s. He’ll dream of the simple life. You’ll dream of some other life. From time to time you’ll be made to watch his awesome GoPro footage of him on his log doing his merry dance on a wave that looks about 2 feet tall. I swear Garret’s Mrs says the same about his Nazare footage. Go Pro footage makes it all look like slop. Sorry Garret.
15. He’ll think nothing of buying a new board, even when there’s no cash. Fact. Boards are friends for life. And you really don’t need to go into the garage to count them. There’s no point. Like an alcoholic with stashes of vodka in the waste bin, there are boards you don’t even know about.
16. You will only have to go with him once or twice. You’ll soon find out that going surfing with him, unless it’s a beautiful sunny summer’s day is a bit cack. It’ll be cold and raining and if you go off for a walk with the keys you’ll find him shivering and furious waiting for you to return so he can get out of his pissy wetsuit. It’s the sure fire way to get uninvited. Believe me, you’re better off doing your own thing. He'll get over it.
17. If you were shagging someone else he’d probably never notice - unless it was one of his surfing mates. But only when they go missing from the lineup. He’s so flipping blinkered he’ll miss everything – even if it was hiding under the bed.
18. If you want news, don’t rely on him to tell you. They sit out the back yabbering for hours on end. But they never find out anything useful about the lives of their surfing buddies. So if you want to know stuff about the girlfriend, mum’s illness, the kids, school, work etc., don’t ask him what’s going on when he gets home from a surf. All they do is talk crap about wetsuits, crowds and far flung trips.
19. He’s hot in a wetsuit…but when it comes off…yew. Wetsuit tans. Pasty white with brown hands and a sunburned face. Spindly legs. White bod. I dunno. Cosmo would make you believe it’s hot…whatevs.
20. You’re off to A and E again. Get used to those calls from the hospital. Only it’s never anything as cool as being bitten by a shark or being beaten up for not being local. No. It’s broken toes falling over on the beach. It’s a broken nose from going over the falls. It’s reef rash. It’s staph infections from surfing Pipe (the other Pipe). The shits. The works. But never anything interesting.

And that, my dear friends is the truth. You knew it would be this way didn’t you? Yep.

P.S. Despite the shits, the wetsuits and the pish in the bathroom, it’s actually a good, decent life chasing waves.  It’s a good reason for getting up in the morning and a good reason for loving the ocean, the earth and all of nature. I make no apologies for the fun we’ve had.

You had fun, didn’t you?