Raves & Rants . . from Penzance

This article appears in the December issue of Cornwall Today magazine  if you want to see it in its full technicolour design glory. Tom Bawcock’s Eve A merry place you may believe, Was Mouzel 'pon Tom Bawcock's Eve It's December 23 rd , very nearly Christmas, ‘Just two more sleeps, s o exciting!’ as my four year old informs me, at half past three in the morning . Later that day, in the warmth of the Ship Inn, Mousehole, glasses chink and holiday conversations flow. Outside, families stroll around the picturesque harbour, absorbing the village's famous lights as they twinkle in the gathering winter darkness. It’s a picture perfect portrait of a Cornish seaside village at Christmas. But there’s something more in the pub today, a subtle undercurrent of expectation, a buzz in the air, a reason the pub is so densely packed. Oddly, the pub bell rings out quite soon after sunset, and a hush quickly spreads through the pub’s warren of nooks an...

Luckily, summer arrived this year, immediately stymieing the 'It's so grey and rainy and cold' critics. Of course, up to this point, no one was quite sure if summer would put in an appearance, but as you know, we got hit by a heatwave. And no sooner did it arrive than the critics cry changed to 'It's too hot and muggy, bring back the grey'. During the heatwave I was at home, stuck in front of the computer, editing video footage from a two week surf trip to France . Apart from when I was out making more video of things in another hot zone - of which more in a later post. The video footage, the two week stuff, consisted of nearly 100Gb of clips and stills, totalled nearly 10,000 files, and has taken (alongside PR, press and editorial work) the last three months to condense into a 45 minute promo film.  Sifting stills, naming clips, timing them to music and the myriad finer points of tweaking footage into a narrative is massive multi-tasking job for someone mor...

Dear Reader As ever, it has been a long time since I last typed words into the ether, however this time I have a proper excuse. A right royal one, even.  Earlier in the year I took a call about photographing some people who would be visiting the area later in the year. 'Would love to,'  I said, 'Who are they?' 'Umm, we can't say at the moment', the caller replied. We talked some more and then, even having sworn me to secrecy, they would still only give away that 'They are an eminent, high profile and newsworthy couple'.  As it turned out, the eminent personages were none other than HRH The Queen and Prince Philip. Unfortunately, the date they were coming conflicted with a date I already had booked on a ferry for a two week surf trip/photo shoot to France. Should I blow out the trip and get an HRH portrait or two in my portfolio - by Royal Appointment?  What a quandary - photograph the Queen or go on a surf trip?  What would you do? 'Can...

The second day of the swell and it's 'not quite so big today', i.e. still pant-fillingly huge. There are only a few people on the planet that that will take this sort of ocean power on, and someone has already been Medivac-ed out. No details as yet. These videos were shot on a phone in the channel only minutes ago. Stills take a little longer to come out, probably by tomorrow morning, I'll update this page as they do, so keep checking back. Quiksilver highlights, Day Two Quiksilver put this together from the first day Surfline - amazing video here Stills from Day Two :  Great footage from Surfing Life Teahupoo Tahiti 13 05 2013 by 1ere-polynesie A beautiful shot from Tim McKenna. Alan Riou flying in Brazilian Pedro Scooby took a trip over the falls, and then probably a trip home. Laird on a beauty   Some amazing shots of yesterday here from Surfer Mag

There's such a lot of imagery and video coming out of Teahupoo, the massively challenging reef break in Tahiti, that I thought I'd keep adding things below as I find them. This is the biggest swell to show up since the Code Red swell of 2011, and the world's elite/ craziest big wave surfers have shown up to the Code Red II party. SurfLine's Fantastic crop of photos Wave of the Day Yesterday:   Mark Healy, pic by Ted Grambeau Raimana, pic by Shane Dorian Koa Rothman, pic by More photos from yesterday here: Teahupoo Photos In the video below you can see the green bottom of a boat getting caught out and flipped over the falls on the inside. Hopefully no injuries, but that would have been a nasty wipeout. Tomorrow is supposed to be even bigger, keep an eye on the Teahupoo Live Cam More photos of the scene here:  Teahupoo Code Red

It's that time of year again, the one where winter has ebbed slowly away, and the sun has finally decided to get his hat on , which, it turns out, is exactly the sort of hat designed to convince you that there's a veritable heatwave happening, right here, right now.  And so when I was asked if I wanted to go sea swimming last Thursday, of course I immediately said yes.  But then, I had to say yes because people always say yes when the person who's asking the question is Big Frank . If you followed that link to the website of Big Frank, a massive black Dutch guy whose strap line is  ' When you want to make sure you get your money quickly ', then you'll be pleased to know it wasn't (luckily) him asking.  Although obviously I would have had to, if he had asked. No, this was my neighbour Big Frank, from down the way. There is another Frank as well, you see, known to all as 'Frank', and Big Frank is, er, bigger than him. Mainly by dint of Frank bein...

Alright so it's a bit of a maudlin title but death is something that lives with us all our lives. A taboo subject worth talking about, it seems to have been all around me recently. Constant reminders of wars ending lives on the news, or multiple pile ups and recently the thought that a health improving marathon may result in your demise has bought the subject to the forefront of my mind.  Perhaps those factors, perhaps the friends I saw today headed to a funeral dressed in black, perhaps encroaching age. Whatever, today I have death on the brain and am thus persuaded to write down this thought about my own bit of mortal coil shuffling. It's a thought that I've had for quite a while now, a plan for my own funeral, one that I've been finessing, and this may seem odd, since around the time I first saw the inside of a barreling wave many years ago. It's quite simple and goes like this: It's six to eight foot with a light offshore breeze at my local break. It...

Unsurprisingly, the Canary Isles are mostly dry and sun-drenched, set, as they are, on a similar latitude to the Sahara Desert. And perhaps a perfect holiday destination for a surfing Brit since their location just off the coast of Africa attracts all north Atlantic swells. As a soubriquet 'The Hawaii of Europe' is thus well earned, though these volcanic islands are less lush than their Pacific brethren, having had their last eruption a mere 300 years ago.  From a choice of seven larger islands - Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro, long time surf buddy Clyde and I picked the easternmost island, Lanzarote, which, I was told, had been an entirely dry and perfectly sun-drenched destination for the past two years.  Until, of course, the day we touched down under dark storm clouds and pouring rain.  Mind you, we had landed in Fuerteventura. For a run down of the following seven complex, misery inducing, lost surf opportunity h...

Alas, words elude me, and seem to have done so for a couple of months.  In fact over this time words have been escaping from me but only as speech rather than as written or typed examples of the form.  At one point during the recent festivities they started escaping from me in song form at the same time as a catchy tune, which I'd rather taken a fancy to, came on the pub jukebox.   My pleasure in voicing the words was immediately arrested by my companions with their use of other words like 'off-key' or 'tone deaf' and even 'droning'.  Harsh, cutting, not to say painful orismology , I was forced to shout 'Them's hurtin' words!' at the undeniable truth. Perhaps not floods of words, but certainly floods of water have been the order of many days, and nights though, with last year being the second wettest on record for the UK, though apparently not for Cornwall. Some of my photos got published when floods hit Newlyn recently. I did a lot o...