Not waving ...

This is what I did mostly.

I found it absolutely exhausting! I kept telling myself useful things like, 'I'm not a failure if I don't succeed, I'm a success because I try.' I used lots of 'PMA' as one of the other women called it. My body let me down though. I kept on going back in and I got so exhausted that as I was trying to pick myself up and recapture my surf board (it was tethered to my right ankle so it couldn't go too far) I'd just get knocked right
down again by the piddly little dregs of the next wave.

I am disappointed. I've wanted to surf ever since my Mum took me to Cornwall on holiday and bought me a balsa wood surf board that I played about on in the sea. I was nine or ten years old when we first went to Cornwall on holiday. I can't remember if it was then that I had the surf board, or another year. We went again a couple of times in subsequent years. Camping of course.

I was crying tears of exhaustion and frustration a couple of times this morning. I kept them to myself though.

When I was sitting on the beach having a rest and feeling sorry for myself, I remembered the climbing lessons I took on the indoor climbing wall at Huddersfield. I used to find that very difficult and very challenging. I didn't have the upper body strength or agility (and this was 10 years ago!). One evening I felt so frustrated that I lost my temper half way up the wall and started shouting about 'What the fuck am I doing here ...' etc., etc., etc. [Tracey, if you're reading this, do you remember?] The instructor looked a bit taken aback. It was the same guy who took us down to Derbyshire one Saturday and who thought I didn't mean it when I said I'd changed my mind about abseiling. He should have known better!