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.