Don't Try This At Home, Kids

My friend and guru Kukurusta has pasted a link to a TV programme I contributed to in January 2006 about surfing in Barcelona.



(I don't know how to get the whole thing in, so if you want to see the full width of the video, try here: http://blog.ravalnet.org/ravalsurf/2009/10/17/ravalsurf-a-thalassa/)

The director failed to catch me riding a wave (surprise, surprise). Instead my contribution is limited to embarrassing shots of me warming up, cycling to the beach and talking about My Life As A Surfer (in Spanish). What makes it particularly hilarious, though, is that while she was shooting, I got someone else's surfboard in the face, leading to a nasty cut, horror-film quantities of blood, 13 stitches and the fetching scar above my right eye.

After struggling to the beach, I faced an odyssey of fainting lifeguards, excellent ambulances, thieving taxis and three different Kafkaesque hospitals before I found someone whose needlework I admired enough to trust them with my dashing good looks. Now if anyone asks, I tell them I got the scar in a fencing duel over a German count's mistress.

Rather than cut me from the programme, though, the director did the interview anyway. So instead of the healthy glow of a Mediterranean surfer, I look like a car crash victim. And certainly not the best advertisement for surfing. Or maybe that was the point, a subliminal message to keep would-be surfers of the water.