Even though it may be winter where you are, down under it’s the height of the summer and that means tourists – bloody loads of them. Since Christmas I have hardly been in the water because there is barely space to surf.

The Aussie schools all closed at Christmas for the summer holidays so the water is packed with kids and their foamy boards from Santa. This makes the beach crazy busy and also means that some people are suffering from a wee dose of surf rage – me included.

The other day I was in the water thinking how lucky I was to be paddling for a wave on such a beautiful beach when…..if a big muscly macho type didn’t just drop right in on front of me?! Now since I have been living in Manly I have – accidentally I must stress – dropped in on a few folk myself over the past 10 months, so I decided to give the eijit the benefit of the doubt – it was probably an accident right? Eh no – wave after wave after wave this village idiot just ignored me and dropped right in on front of every wave I was on.

Eventually I decided just to go for it and ignore his bad manners and rode the same wave as him, forcing him to slow down and get off. Sometimes though you just got to move on – I was getting more and more stressed out in the water completely cancelling any relaxing effects I may have been previously feeling, so I got right out of there feeling totally depressed. Since then I’ve been back in the water and witnessed a lot of bad behaviour from some serious snaking to some nasty collisions. Even when the beach is packed there’s really no excuse – what’s the rush? It’s summertime – a time of much chillness, I’m off to yoga till the water gets a bit calmer.

L x