Losing my dignity while catching a wave

NEVER mind Hurricane Isaac.

You want to try surfing in Co Clare. I tried surfing once, in my younger leaner days, somewhere remote in the Indian Ocean.

And when I say ‘tried’, I mean ‘splashed about helplessly in the shallows like a distressed flatfish’. Anyway I was too dumbstruck watching the professionals doing it. The island, Nias, was one of the world championship sites, and so there were surfers from all over the planet — Hawaii, South Africa, Australia — effortlessly riding waves the height of buildings, skimming through roaring tubes of surf, flying and zig-zagging across the hurtling water like Jesus, if Jesus had a surfboard.

Fast forward a decade or so, move the compass far north west, and here we are in Lahinch, facing a churning wind-whipped sea the colour of wet slate.

From a distance, it looks like there is a particularly inept seal colony at the edge of waves — dozens and dozens of bobbing black things flopping in and out of the water. Beginner surfers, all wrapped up in black rubber, banging about on borrowed boards, clueless.

A word about wetsuits. Obviously, this being the North Atlantic, you can’t just rock up in board shorts and a bikini. For a start, you’re not Demi Moore. And then there’s the hypothermia, which will kill you in seconds if you are not at least as insulated as a walrus. Which, conveniently, I am, before I ever get changed. The surf school chap hands me a large wetsuit, and tells me to roll up the legs — I’m all about the width, not the height.

Looking around for the changing area in which to stuff myself into this floppy yet awkward rubber thing, I discover that it’s on the seafront — it’s called the road. I don’t know if you have ever tried to heave yourself into a wetsuit on a public highway in the West of Ireland before, but let me tell you this — you will be a stronger person afterwards. Red-faced, sweating, undignified — but stronger.

Who knew that shoving yourself, lard first, into what is essentially a giant condom, could be so strenuous? Before ever hitting the surf — that is, being hit violently and repeatedly by the surf — I am exhausted. I look like a black pudding with an ironing board under my arm.

Of course the idea of actually surfing is laughable. Humming that Chumbawumba song in my head — I get knocked down, then I get up again — I proceed to get knocked down, off, under, and into the surging, crashing waves. Over and over. Around me, people are kneeling on their boards. Some are even standing. My small light son whips past, upright and arms outstretched like a mini Kelly Slater. FFS. Heaving onto the board, lying flat, I catch a wave. I’m surfing! Well, body boarding. In a foot of water. It feels fantastic.