Betty

I've just discovered a rather crucial point about surfing, and that is:

You cannot surf if there are no waves.

All of my hard research - all of my dedicated Youtube watching and Surf site net-surfing (I know; I enjoyed that irony too) - and this is the one thing that anybody forgot to tell me. I sat as close as I could to my computer, established how all of the pros were standing (just as you'd expect them to stand, actually), dyed my hair blonde again (it was inevitable) and even practiced jumping up on to my board without a board, on the floor of my bedroom (not very easy, because you need muscles that function, apparently, and mine don't).

When I was a kid, my mum had to physically restrain me from wearing my new party dresses to bed: so eager I was to try them out, and so reluctant to wait until an actual party. Nothing has changed. A couple of days ago I bought a brand new (old) surfboard (my grandparents had given me some money for Christmas, and a friend of a friend was selling his monstrous pink surfboard, Surf Betty. As my grandma's name is - as fate would have it - Betty, I immediately bought it. She's now signing off emails as "love, your surfing grandma" so it has already been worth every yen). There was no chance at all that I wasn't going to take Betty out for a spin straight away (surfboard, not grandma), so this morning I popped her in the car, hired a wetsuit and drove to the local beach.

The girl in the surfing shop giggled an awful lot. That was the first sign. The second sign was that she said something in Japanese and made a motion with her hand that looked like the kind of dance my mum does at family discos. The third was that the surf shop was empty, and the fourth was that the beach was too.

"Excellent," I said, struggling into my wetsuit (it's far more tiring than actually surfing: this is obviously how surfers get ripped bodies). "Fools," I laughed as I grabbed Betty, smacked it against my head, tripped up on the cord, turned round and banged it against the car and finally dragged it - with all the elegance of a lame monkey - down to the sea. Because it was, and I have to point this out, a beautiful day. Blue sky, sunshine, sea sparkling. The perfect day for surfing.

Except that it wasn't. I pulled my board out into the sea, and then me and Betty lay there for twenty five minutes, waiting to do something other than bob up and down.

"Betty," I said eventually (I like talking to inanimate objects as long as there is nobody else around to witness it. And - believe me - there was nobody around. Not one single person. And certainly not one single surfer). "We're not getting much surfing done, are we."
Betty said nothing, because Betty is a large piece of floating plastic.
The sea continued to sparkle and lull about gently: it looked, for all the world, like it was asleep. Every now and then a tiny wave would turn up - foaming gently at the ridge - and I would get all excited and paddle and paddle and try and hop up onto the board ('hop' is not the right word, but let's just pretend it is), and then me and Betty would go upwards about three inches and bob back down again.
"This is not going so well, is it," I told Betty, and then I decided to give up, lie down and have a little nap. Betty is a monster - huge, fat, pink and floral (my board, not my grandma) - and it's a little like having a raft attached to your ankle. Very comfortable, as long as you're not trying to climb on top of her and make yourself vertical.
After a nice amount of time I realised I was burning, and Betty and I pushed our way back to the beach.

The girl at the shop was still laughing when I returned the wetsuit (struggling out of it is even harder, incidentally).
"Good?" she said, giggling.
"Excellent," I said. "No waves, but I had a nice little sleep."
She didn't understand a word of what I said, but she gathered enough to know that I had now learnt my lesson. "Come back soon," she said as I left.
"I will," I said, because I'd had a lovely afternoon anyway, even if I hadn't caught one single wave. I'd gotten to know Betty better, and I'm convinced that now she's on my side I'll be a pro before summer.
"Wednesday," the girl in the shop said in English as I was opening the shop door to leave. "Big waves." And then she laughed again and waved me away.

See, my mum was wrong. Wearing my party dresses to bed didn't make me want to wear them any less when a party happened: it just meant that I was comfortable in it by the time I was standing in a corner and not talking to anyone (that's what I did at parties. It was My Thing). The same goes for Betty. We're friends, now, and now that we've napped together there's nothing we can't achieve.

So thanks, Betty my surfboard, and thanks Betty, my Grandma. There's nothing better than a good spot of surfing; even - as I now know - if there are no waves at all.