Cocktales

Cocktales

 

The Bangkok Sling

2 parts Necessity

1 part Unsure Approach Tactic

1 part Jet Lag

A dash of Age Related Social Anxiety  

I go for a two-seater, somewhere near the edge, placing my bag on my lap. I scan the room with a forced nonchalance.  Everyone else is sitting with someone but that’s to be expected. I’ll have that soon enough.  

I get my book out, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It contrasts magnificently with my surroundings and also acts as a friendly reminder that some people will slit your throat for absolutely no reason. It’s nice to keep that in mind, when travelling alone.  

I take a sip of my Chang and tuck into my Pad Thai, taking in the cultural sights of Koh San Road – the ping pong shows, the beer towers, the sweaty tourists and the tuktuk drivers that will fleece you without a second thought. Just yesterday I saw a mystic man spit into a girl’s mouth. ‘Healing’ he called it, she didn’t seem to agree.  

I lay down my chopsticks and wonder if I have any bean sprouts stuck in my teeth. I light a cigarette, at a pound a pack it’d be rude not to, and let my eyes roam. Those three look alright but they look a bit German, I don’t want to embarrass myself with a language barrier, I keep looking.  

Right, there’s two there. They look nice, and they’re laughing.  And they look English, a bit Essex in fact. Nice teeth, apparent low inebriation level, high approachability, they’re a definite maybe. I finish my drink and head to the bar, skirting perilously close to them to see if they speak English.  

It’s a yes.  

Drink in hand, on the way back from my recon fly-by, I look at their shoes. Shoes are very important, they tell a lot about a person. Let’s see, flip flops and those weird fabric shoes that seem to be in fashion. It’ll do. At least they’re not wearing Crocs. 

Ok, now for the approach. If one of them smoked then I could just ask for a light, the perfect, text book ice breaker.

But no. Healthy bastards.  

I remind myself how I need to meet friends and construct a solid mental image of myself, reading alone in my hotel room. I can only carry so many books. As I mentally count down, I do a final bean sprout check and wipe the sweat off my top lip. 

Three, two, one.

Go.

Serve over ice in a highball, best garnished with a Marlboro Light.

 

 

The Vietnamese Bus Bomb 

2 parts Ridiculously Long Journey

1 part Suspected Dysentery

1 part Reduced Melanin

A splash of Ill-Advised Hareem Trousers 

I climb back into my bed, tucking my newly stamped passport into my money belt. I can’t stretch out of course, anyone over 5’8 is viewed as a giant round here.  We all have our crosses to bear. Mine is an energetic local woman who keeps flicking my face with her hair when she leans over me to adjust the curtain with her umbrella. Something she likes to do a lot. We’ve been on this bus for sixteen hours already, imodium-ed up the eyeballs and rapidly losing patience. 

We’re all pushed into a corner of course, the foreigners. The one nearest to the toilet and furthest away from the fire exits. I was woken up last night by a mouse crawling in my hair, no doubt trying to get at my curry-crab flavoured crisps. As I tried to get back to sleep I watched a large cockroach sauntering across the head rest in front, it paused to pose, silhouetted heroically in the moonlight.  

Suddenly, from the front of the bus comes a commotion. The driver is heading straight for us, ‘the white corner’, gesticulating insanely and pointing at each of us in turn. We look blankly at each other, and then at him. He gets louder. Other passengers around us begin pointing at us, then the border, then at us. It makes no sense.  

He starts pulling us from our seats. We climb down, file out of the bus and stand there in the dust. Then, with no warning, the door closes and he drives off. All of about twenty metres over the border. Then, he opens the door, pokes his head out and starts screaming back at us, motioning for us to get back on and cursing us in Vietnamese for jogging too slow. We get back on the bus and squeeze back into our seats.  

The bus drives on.

Serve in a martini glass with a slice of lemon and a selection of brand-name Loperamide.

 
 

The Skinny Dipper

3 parts Banana Leaves and Tamarind

2 parts Dutch Courage

Top off with Drunken Camaraderie 

I don’t know quite how it happened, but I remember that I was definitely naked. Definitely naked in a group of naked people, in a river, somewhere in the Thai jungle. And there was massaging going on, I remember massaging. 

There are chickens underneath the hut, I can hear them squabbling and scratching in the dirt. The morning light sticks its pudgy hands in between the slats, pawing at my eyelids and shoving its fingers up my nose. 

Oh God.  

It must’ve have been that stuff we were smoking. ‘Banana leaves and tamarind’ the villager told me. Banana leaves and tamarind, my arse. I look through the open doorway (there is no door) down to the river. I can see our guide down there, talking to the villager and his wife. They’re laughing. Probably about us. 

I try to piece it together. Everything was normal up until that point, ‘banana point’. We had completed the second day of the hike, had a refreshing swim in the river and eaten a sumptuous meal of rice and mayonnaise. We were getting to know our hike-mates – the hot French girl, the German loner, the weird Belgian doctor and his wife and the rest of them.  

It had all gone so wrong.  

I reach for my suitably ethnic, tie dyed handbag and fumble for my camera. The start-up tune slides drawing pins into my pitifully dehydrated brain. I flick through the pictures. Oh yes, here they are, nestled tumour-like after photos of elephants and waterfalls.

Skinny-dipping; I never learn.

Serve Clothed. 

 

The Vang Vienger

1 whole Cunty Gary

2 parts Alcohol Induced Lust

1 part Aphrodisia

A splash of Regret 

After walking for about an hour we eventually find the hospital, nowhere near where we were directed by the last two people we asked. There are plastic garden chairs lined up outside, full of women fanning themselves in the heat, a baby attached to a descending nipple. They stare openly as we pass.  

We mount the steps by the main entrance and kick off our flip flops, pausing to read the signs in broken-English.  

We head towards the pharmacy. 

 “Fucking cunty Gary and his cunty mate. He wasn’t even any fucking good.”

We walk through ward after ward. I’m limping from when I fell through the floor of the bar a few a days ago, the A4 sized bruise hidden under my ever-faithful hareem trousers. We find the pharmacy and approach the window, trying to keep our voices down.  

“I had unprotected sex last night,” whispers my companion, “and I need the pill.” 

We are met with puzzled faces. The nurses here are used to seeing Westerners with injuries, normally broken arms and slashed faces from tubing escapades, with the odd alcohol poisoning and drug-induced stupor thrown in for good measure. They look us up and down.  

She’s floundering. I take over. I point at her.

“No condom,” I say. 

More nurses come to join the confusion. They converse in Lao as I hold my hands under my ribs, and then push them out, imaging an air pregnancy.

More muttering. 

I cross my arms as if cradling a baby. “No baby,” I say. 

A crowd is gathering. It’s getting desperate.

Time for the big guns. 

I hold out my left hand, forming a hoop with my thumb and forefinger. With my right, I extend my index finger. Taking a side-long glance at my red-faced mate, I begin to slowly move my finger towards the hole. The audience watches in anticipation. 

It enters. 

I go in and out a couple of times, quickening in pace to build up the momentum, before signifying the shivering crescendo by jamming my finger to the knuckle and making a raspberry sound with my mouth. I point at my friend (somewhere in the ovary area) and then do the baby cradle again, “No baby”, I say. 

They converse again.   

“Ahh!” one shouts, “The after-morning pill!”
“Yes!” we reply, “The after-morning pill!”  

Embarrassed sniggering and a couple of high fives all round, to commemorate a job well done. 

The crowd disperses. They give us the pill. 

For a mellower version, serve in a low ball with a side of Over The Counter By a False Name Tramadol.

 

Slippery Crabber

2 parts Flor de Caña Rum

1 part Vegetarian Smugness

½ a measure of Peer Pressure

A dollop of Bioluminescent Algae 

“I couldn’t possibly,” I reply, “I’m a vegetarian.” I’m flooded with an image of myself on my high horse, meadow flowers braided into my hair, looking down at the smiling woodland creatures through my iridescent glow.  

I wonder if the guys I’m talking to get the same effect.  

Nevertheless, I help collect driftwood for the fire and give up my pocket knife for the good of the group. We’re already a bottle of rum in, it took longer than we thought for the tide to go out.  

As night falls, we pick up our flip flops and head over to the reef, dragging our feet through the phosphorescent algae in the shoreline. We keep looking back to see our foot prints written in starlight. Those of us on acid find this quite overwhelming.  

 We only have a few torches between us, so we stick together, drunkenly belting out a rousing rendition of ‘I Drove All Night’ by Roy Orbison. We reach the rocks and begin to scramble over, those of us with knives clamping them between our teeth. Then, we gather into a group and assign pairs. I nominate myself the official torch-holder.  

The hunt begins.  

He goes only for the big ones, stabbing them neatly in the middle of the shell and flicking them into the saucepan I’m holding. I replace the top each time to stop them crawling out. I found the first few quite upsetting. Poor little buggers. 

But as it goes on, I get more and more into it. The thrill of the chase has awoken previously repressed primal instincts. I can smell their fear. After about fifteen minutes, I turn into the ultimate hunter, scaling rocky outcrops and seaweed covered rock pools to find the biggest. 

“Here’s a massive one!” I scream, “Hurry up! Stab it! Fucking stab it!”, as the doomed crustacean tries to jam itself into a too-small hole, its spindly little legs paddling uselessly at the wet sand. Take that, you crabby bastard.  

It wasn’t until we made our way back to the fire, with our saucepans full of our pelagic bounty, did I feel any kind of remorse. As I watched them sizzle on the grate, lined up claw to claw next to their fallen comrades, I was overcome by shame. We had orchestrated and carried out a mass slaughter. They had never even seen us coming.  

I never knew I had such bloodlust in me.

Lightly dust brim of glass with some Fraudulently Obtained Pseudoephedrine. Serve on ice.

Cardiff Alms

The Monico 

We are gathered here today in remembrance of a lady dear to all our hearts, who has now been demolished and turned into luxury flats.  

I remember when it happened. After years of darkness she sat blinking in the sun, her back wall ripped out exposing row upon row of faded red seats. Through the lesion I could see her sleepy projector window clouded with glaucoma, and her set of centre steps which now just led to nothing.  

Unfortunately, it wasn’t done with any kind of decorum. It was as if someone had bent her over, lifted up her brown and yellow skirt and showed her big granny knickers to the world.  

And that was that, the heavy velvet curtains drawn on the days of Saturday cinema, the screechy Wurlitzer organ and the parade of birthday children. The credits had rolled on the excitement of seeing the stern-faced, Mr Monico in the foyer and the nomination of who was going to ring up the answer machine to get the timetable. 

Her carpets were sticky with generations of ‘not to be sold separately’ cans of coke, kernel-heavy popcorn and overpriced Revels. “Keep the floor neat beneath your feet”, she’d say, “Refreshments are available in the lobby,” and then serenade us with the ‘Pearl and Dean’ theme tune. 

She was a place of playdates, first dates and Beauty and the Beast. Not to mention burgeoning romances and first-time teenage fumblings. I distinctly remember a man smoking in there once, big puffs billowing up through the projector beam. My mum was too polite to say anything. 

Mr Monico came through my brother’s till in Tesco a few years after, and he was surprised to learn that his name wasn’t Mr Monico at all, it was in fact, Mr Bull. He looked genuinely upset when he later informed me of this.  

And so, with a heavy heart, we say goodbye to this Disney sympathiser, Titanic trader and Star Wars supplier. 

We’ll miss you. 

 

The Cabin

Roald Dahl referred to the sweet shop in Boy as ‘the very centre of our lives.  To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk or a church is to a Bishop.’ And I would hasten to agree.  

What The Cabin brought us, with her little round windows and moss-green roof tiles, was a haven. She was the communal grandmother, the saccharine reward to keep me still in church that became a Sunday ritual. 

With my pocket money burning a hole through my ladybird purse, I would count out penny sweets into the paper bag, pondering over my selection. Kola Kubes, Millions, Sherbet Lemons, Milk Bottles, Flying Saucers, Lemon Bonbons; all were scrutinised and mulled over. Not just anyone got in.

Once, the man behind the counter informed me, to my horror, that I was one penny short. He winked at me and told me not to tell anyone, handing over the corrupted bag with its nefarious stash. I reached up and took it, awe-struck. I couldn’t believe he’d put his neck on the line just for me. There and then I made a solemn oath that to my dying day, I would not reveal this treacherous debt. As soon as I got home, I hid the incriminating sweet bag in the back of Noel, my zip up monkey, and took from it furtively.  

She’s a chiropractic clinic now, the Cabin. They tore out her wooden shelves, shelves which used to hold jar upon jar of tooth-rotting bribes and sticky enticers, to make room for treatment couches. They lino’d over the wood and white-washed her walls. Now people go there to get their backs cracked and joints adjusted.  

It just doesn’t seem as fun.

May she rest in peace.

 

The Bandstand

A friend to the people of Cardiff and to Bon Jovi, the Bandstand was a man to be trusted and depended upon. He the meeting place for countless people over numerous generations. I myself used to wait for friends with him, in the days before mobile phones, when we just made solid plans. I also spent most of an afternoon with him once, queueing to meet the Super Furry Animals in Virgin Megastore. There was an awkward picture of me in the Echo the next day, clutching my newly signed copy of ‘Rings Around the World’ and looking like, as I did for about a year, the oldest one from Hanson.  

“I’ll see you there at eleven”, we’d say, carefully timing our phone call to try to avoid the embarrassment of having to speak to one of our friends’ parents. I’d only had the five minute window of when my mum chucked my brother off the dial-up so I could use the phone. “You should get outside more”, she’d tell him, brushing back her perm and adjusting her massive glasses. So, bang on eleven we’d turn up in our hippy skirts and Gwen Stefani bindis, skirting the Goths which congregated on him to smoke.  

He supplied a familiar facade, a destination to aim for. He was reliable and stalwart, a permanent fixture. And then one day, he was gone. It happened so fast it was over before I’d even acknowledged it.  

They paved over his uprooted foundations and twisted his ribs up through the concrete to make bike racks.  

 People walk over his grave every day and have no idea he was ever there.  

 

Rhiwbeina Infants

I am happy to see so many of her friends here today, and I’m sure many of you will remember her with the same fondness and affection as I do.  

She had been my first teacher. She had stuck star stickers on my recorder and taught me how to write my name. She was there the time I forgot my vest and had to do PE with my dress tucked into my knickers, and when Sophie peed herself during assembly and I had to keep shuffling further and further back to escape the spread.  

She had sympathised with me when I was sick all over her parquet floor (in my black and white stripy jumper) and the time I was caught drawing pencil stars on the desk (wearing the cursed flowery dress which I refused to wear ever again). I was made to wipe them off with the entire class standing around the table watching, my face hot and red.  

“You missed a bit,” said Chloe, which was ludicrous, as she had drawn just as many stars as me. In fact, she had drawn the first.

It was that moment that I realised that there was no justice in the world.  

It was a sad time, the night she burnt down. I was there myself, watching her impromptu pyre from the fence, bundled up in my snowflake dressing gown and wellies. I remember feeling the heat on my face and the cold autumn air on my back, like ice cream and warm chocolate sauce.  

We stood in silence, the whole street, the dead air punctured by a steady crackle and the occasional muffled crunch. Her immolation was hard to watch. I thought of all the ‘mummy and daddy’ crayon drawings and the painted hand prints that were now reduced to just spiralling embers.  

But she lives on through us. I have many fond memories of her, which I’m sure you all do too. She was a teacher to us all.  

 

Zeus

It is with great sadness that I stand in front of you to remember the life of Zeus. He was a brother, a father and a friend, not to mention a matchmaker and a pretty damn good dancer. 

For me, he bridged the gap between childhood and adolescence, a neon lantern in the dark no-man’s land of the first few years of high school. Through his under-sixteen nights he taught me about boys, about wearing heels and the importance of keeping your head up during a foam party.  

We’d queue round the block for an hour or so, girls on one side, boys on the other. The doormen would check our pockets for cigarettes and our bags for booze. I never tried to sneak anything in, I was far too much of a goody two shoes. One time, the woman on the door gave me an odd look when she reached into the pockets of my denim jacket and found them packed to the brim with sanitary towels. My mum said I only needed to take one, two at the most, but I always was paranoid about stuff like that.  

Once inside, we’d totter up the stairs in our super cool wedged sandals and pedal pushers and immediately cluster in a corner. We couldn’t believe what some of the girls were wearing.  

After scoping it out a bit, and getting the obligatory group photo taken (that’s three pounds each, you can pick it up on the way out), we’d make our way over to the dance floor. He’d always play the 90s favourite, ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’, which was always, always followed up with ‘Mambo Number Five’. We’d always dance in a circle, not daring to put our handbags down after our parent’s stern warnings: there could be kids from Cantonian here.  

Although someone now stands where he once stood, he’ll always be special to us. He was the platform for our first foray into adulthood, showed us what it was going to be like from there on in, taught us what it was to be big.

And for that, I thank him.

Sleeper Bus

So, here was the writing exercise:
'Write about an everyday experience from the point of view of a ‘community’ that you are a member off (national, physical, religious, class, political, industrial).'

And here's my take! 

The Laos / Vietnam Border

 
Sleeper Bus


We’re all pushed into a corner of course, the foreigners. The one nearest to the toilet and furthest away from the fire exits. I was woken up last night by a mouse crawling in my hair, no doubt trying to get at my curry-crab flavoured crisps. As I tried to get back to sleep I watched a large cockroach sauntering across the head rest in front, it paused to pose, silhouetted heroically in the moonlight.

At dawn the next morning, after the bureaucratic hoop jumps, I climbed back into my bed, tucking my newly stamped passport into my money belt. I couldn’t stretch out of course, anyone over 5’8 is viewed as a giant round here. We all had our crosses to bear. Mine was an energetic local woman who kept flicking my face with her hair when she leant over me to adjust the curtain with her umbrella. Something she liked to do a lot. We’d been on this bus for sixteen hours already, imodium-ed up the eyeballs and rapidly losing patience.

Suddenly, from the front of the bus came a commotion. The driver was heading straight for us, the white corner, gesticulating insanely and pointing at each of us in turn. We looked blankly at each other, and then at him. He got louder. Other passengers around us began pointing at us, then the border, then at us. It made no sense.

He started pulling us from our seats. We climbed down, filed out of the bus and stood there in the dust. Then, with no warning, the door closed and he drove off. All of about twenty metres over the border. After screeching to a halt, he opened the door and started screaming back at us, motioning for us to get back on, cursing us in Vietnamese for jogging too slow. We got back on the bus and squeezed back into our seats. The bus drove on.

The Only Way is Essex or Some Shit Like That

So, our writing exercise over reading week was this:

'Write about something you have a very strong opinion on from a neutral point of view.'

 

So, it turns out I'm not very good at being un-opinionated...

 

 

The Only Way is Essex

 

I suppose they do contribute something to society, even if it is just how to get the perfect scouse brow or championing completely unnecessary breast implants. They show that just about anyone can become famous, proving you don’t really need to go to school, or work to better yourself. It's all lying there waiting for you, if you'll sufficiently compromise your dignity. So, they become living beacons of glitter for all the kids who doubted it was possible to become successful by achieving barely anything.

 

“Look at me,” they say, “I can just about string a sentence together and, at 25, I’ve just released my autobiography. It’s called ‘Dreams’ or ‘Dreaming’ or something”. Or “I achieved fame by getting really fat and then thin again and then fat and then thin. I hope to reach the dizzying heights of getting my tits out for Nuts magazine, and then one day fulfilling my life-long dream of getting drunk and then pissing the bed on celebrity Big Brother.”

 

They are the pied pipers of the entitled generation, working hard to stamp the notion of ‘It’s ok to be yourself’ and ‘It’s what on the inside that counts’. I can hear them now, clattering all over the feminist movement in their debilitating stilettos, flashing the highest bidder.

The Monico

After years of darkness is seemed to sit blinking in the light, its back wall ripped out, exposing row up row of faded seats and the sleepy projector window.  It wasn’t done with any kind of decorum, it was as if someone had bent it over, lifted it up its brown and yellow skirt and showed its big granny knickers to the world.

And that was that, the heavy red curtains drawn on the days of Saturday cinema, with the screechy Wurlitzer organ and the parade of birthday children, and the excitement of seeing the stern-faced Mr Monico in the foyer. It was a place of playdates, first dates and Beauty and the Beast.

I used to think that the words ‘Monico’ and ‘Cinema’ were synonymous with each other, and that the giant pot holes in the car park added to the charm. Its carpets were sticky with generations of ‘not to be sold separately’ cans of coke and overpriced Revels. I distinctly remember a man smoking in there once, big puffs billowing up through the projector beam.

When my brother served Mr Monico in Tesco a few years later, he was surprised to learn that his name wasn’t Mr Monico at all, it was in fact Mr Bull. He looked genuinely upset when he later informed me of this.

We had both been duped.

It's Term Time Again! (Cocktales part 1)

Ahh guys, here we go again - me bombarding you with my creative writing. Feel free to peruse, or not, whatever takes your fancy:

'Pick a type of non-fiction book (atlas, recipe book, guidebook, textbook, dictionary). Use this form to structure a piece of writing about something you have experienced.'

This was inspired by Rebecca West's Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary in which the author uses dictionary definitions to frame the story of her mother dying from cancer. Such a powerful book, I would totally recommended.

Here's my (slightly more light-hearted) take on the idea:

 

The Cocktail List

The Bangkok Sling

1 part Jet Lag

1 part Faltering Self Confidence

½ serving of Alleged Experience

A dash of Age Related Social Anxiety

Ok, you’re in. You’ve ordered, it’s fine. Everyone else is sitting with someone but whatever, don’t let that bother you. And you’ve got a book. Get your book out. No wait, no one will chat to someone reading a book – you know that, it’s Backpacker 101. Just sit back and take in the sights, look approachable, friendly. Not too friendly.

Serve over ice in a highball, best garnished with a Malboro Light.

 

The Kuta Vortex

2 parts Necessity

1 part Unsure Approach Tactic

1 part juice of Ill-Advised Hareem Trousers

The chopstick part is over. Right, there’s two there. They look nice, and they’re laughing. They must be funny too. Funny and nice. And they look English, a bit Essex in fact - one of them is wearing those weird fabric shoes that are so popular nowadays. You know they at least speak English, you confirmed that on your recon fly by during your last trip to the bar.

For a more mellow version, serve with a side of Over The Counter By a False Name Tramadol.

 

The Lombok Iced Tea

3 parts Dutch Courage

1 part Desperation

A dash of Time is Ticking

If one of them smoked then I could ask for a light, the text book, perfect ice breaker. But no, healthy bastards. Just think, if you don’t do it now then you’ll have to do it all again tomorrow. You don’t want to spend another night on your own reading in your room do you? Well then. Here we go, one, two three...

Lightly dust brim of glass with some Fraudulently Obtained Pseudoephedrine. Serve on ice.

 

The JP SX - Board Review

Four years in the making, the SX has proven to be one of Swansea-based John ‘JP’ Purton’s most popular models. The boards range from 5’0” to 6’6” and are available in a swallow, square or round tail, depending on personal preference and ability. The board was originally designed for surfers who are competent with performance surfing but are looking for a board which will handle mushy summer waves. It is a board design with versatility in mind, supposedly being able to handle waist high beach breaks up to head and a half high reefs.

 JP is a well-known name not just around the South Wales area, but across the UK and abroad, and John has been making boards for a long time, a very long time, in fact since he was 13. His two sons, Tom and Louis, are now part of his shaping business and since 2002 they have owned and operated their own DSD shaping machine from their Penclawdd workshop.  

They’re known for high performance, good quality boards and honed through years of experience and expertise. JP has some impressive sponsored riders, such as Llantwit local Nathan Phillips, Tom Lowe, Fergal Smith, the Gower’s Gwen Spurlock and Porthcawl’s Chris Seage.  

The true shortboard is experiencing a decline in popularity at the moment, especially in Britain, with many surfers favouring the old school, retro vibes of a fish or the combined qualities of a hybrid shortie. People with full time jobs who don’t live near the sea don’t have the option of surfing every day and want a board that they can just jump on and get waves, that still maintains the responsive snappiness of a shortboard but with the added buoyancy and volume of a larger board.  

So, with this in mind I borrowed a test JP SX (a 6’2” x 19 ½ x 2 ½ squaretail to be exact) from the guys in City Surf in Cardiff city centre and gave it a couple of tries. I surfed it twice at Rest Bay in Porthcawl and once at Ogmore in the Vale, and also once at a secret reef somewhere on the Glamorgan coast.  I tested it in a variety of conditions as well, between hip and shoulder high on the beachies and head high on the reef. 

The SX performed well, its super fun to ride, easily manoeuvrable, responsive and rides well. Contrary to the fuller plan shape, it’s easy to get a good lip smack out of it and works well on the rail to rail. The relaxed rocker contrasts well with the single to double concave towards the tail, meaning that the board is easy to catch waves on yet snappy and sharp. 

However, on the smallest day when the waves were around hip high, I found it incredibly hard to maintain any speed and found myself sinking wave after wave. Despite the 6’2” length and elevated volume, I still found it hard to surf in the conditions and would have been better off with a retro fish style board, of course this would mean compromising the manoeuvrability. The SX is said to work in waist high beach breaks and above, but I’d say that this was the absolute limit for this board.

In the reef break it went really well – easy to keep the speed up and was really easy to catch waves on. The board definitely benefited from the added punch of the reef and I had a super fun surf, it feels a lot thinner than it actually is and even I got some good spray off my top turns.

Me surfing a different board, on a different day...

I would buy this board to add to my quiver as a good all-rounder, volume for the smaller days and concave for the bigger days yet maintaining responsiveness throughout. Although I wouldn’t go throwing away my retro fish or high performance shortboard just yet, as where this board seems to work well in the middle of the spectrum, it isn’t prepared for the extremes on either end. Saying that, the SX’s fat older brother the SX5, with its 5 fin set up and wider deck, would be perfect for the smaller, weaker waves. Or even the RX5, which is in the same family and yet again has a wider plan shape, and is more akin to an original 80s thruster.  

In a nutshell, I would buy this board. I want this board. It’s a good addition to any quiver.