Naked Bodysurfing with Tigger Newling
Naked
Bodysurfing with Tigger Newling
by
Sam Bleakley
Cartoon Robbie MacIntosh
Cool blue peaks turned white hot at full
tide, sets held taut by a stiff offshore. Heavy foam pulverised the shore-break.
A snapped board seemed imminent, so I switched board for body, left my longboard
on the beach and swam into the closeouts. No carving cutbacks, no criss-cross,
just straight lines. In the fading light the faces went green and greasy and I
slipped under the curtain into the dread silence of a barrel. Spat up the shore
I fumbled home in the rising moon, memories stained deep green.
“I’d forgotten about the pure stoke of
bodysurfing,” I said to my wife Sandy, draining nostrils and clearing crispy
ears. It felt good to be intoxicated with saline, but it was nothing compared
to a bodysurfing session Tigger Newling had enjoyed. “Sexy in fact,” said
Tigger. Tuned in British surfers will remember Tigger as one of the countries
counter cultural surfing icons of the late Sixties and Seventies when minds
expanded and boards contracted. He also won the British Championships in
blistering surf at Freshwater West, Wales in 1973 a few years before he moved
‘Downunder’. Interviewing Tigger for a history of British surfing article, the
style master set loose recalling a naked bodysurf session in the late Seventies in New Zealand:
“I
was at a music festival and in classic Woodstock tradition the beach below the
site became a 'clothing-optional area' where loads of people had crashed out in
the sunshine. So I stripped off and swam out for a naked bodysurf - just me and
my Churchill fins. The waves were nice - five feet lefts pushing across the
cove and no surfers out. I had a few short ones and then stroked into a big
set. I managed to get right up on one hand and hold the angle as the wave
peeled all the way down the beach. It was the longest, most intense body wave
I'd ever had. Just perfect. Sexy in fact - my lack of shorts allowed the
powerful water flow to massage my erogenous zones creating a physiological
reaction - I had become a human single fin!
Dumped in the shore-break I had to
grovel around in the shallows waiting for things to settle down so I could walk
back up the beach to my friends. Trouble was the beach was packed with
beautiful naked girls, delaying a return to a respectable state of non-arousal.
I drew on my meditation techniques. Closing my eyes I pictured Miss Dayrimple -
my horrifying violin teacher at boarding school. This shocking image quickly
brought me down to earth, allowing me to make my way up the beach with a degree
of modesty, gazing intently at the sand.”
Bodysurfing awakens the senses. Keep it up.
