tin.fish

Whilst researching a first paddleboard for a friend, I was inevitably drawn to choose a new paddleboarding.  Honestly, I was not looking for myself but a review of the Shark SUP Performance Tourer 14  resonated with me. It's a tentative baby-step from Tourer to Race paddling.  With a flatter rocker line (yeah - I know what those are now too!) the nose carves through the water like I'm riding a torpedo as a sort of aquatic homage to the end scene of Doctor Strangelove. There are various reasons to own this board, but I'd be stealing better informed comments from the review. But then...  Sunday was rough and I found myself at the beach alone just for a little look.  I had the Aqua Marina Magma with me in the car and a moment of madness took me.  Ten minutes later I was wet suited and running into the waves like a man possessed.  Early attempts to take the down-wind stance proved difficult, and I was wet before I knew it.  Legs like jelly and I ...

My paddleboarding journey started what seemed like years ago, because it was in fact years ago.  Seven in fact.  After a paddleboard rental in Torbay, on a forgivingly flat day, i was bitten by the bug.  By the following spring I had purchased my first paddleboard having done a frankly appalling level of research.  The board was an Aquamarina Vapor.  Whilst ideal for my Wife, I’d picked something entirely unsuitable for myself and it bent under my weight like a comedy banana.  The starter paddle was too short for me by about two feet too but I persisted that year to try and get a feel for SUP.  Oh how people must have laughed at the portly little pale man, flailing around in the shallows, fins almost clean out of the water like a seal waving at the crowd. I should probably rewind a few years to explain that, in spite of how ridiculous I might sound so far, watersports (not the urination kind) are not a new thing for me.  From an early age, I spen...

 I knew, I knew that gerbils were the thin end of the wedge.  Once you allow animals into your home, the Overton Window of acceptable things begins to shift and before you know it you've got yourself a dog.  A Christmas dog - the worst kind of dog. Bunny Fish is a miniature dachshund and she's really bloody tiny.  She seems to have a radar that tells her whenever a human (and especially me) is accessible to be sat or laid on.  If I sit and enjoy a coffee on the floor, as I often do, this happens.  Then you feel obliged to just sit there until your buttocks and legs become clinically dead. I was fully in my "tight ship" mindset, preparing to ensure that Bunny would understand her place in this house and that she was a dog (Han's previous dog thought she was people) and should behave as such.  Then, the first time she cried I ran from my desk to her bed and thought "Ohhhh crap, she's got me". So here we go then, don't we.

On the 17th December, the family and I visited a friend in Copenhagen.  This was booked before omicron broke and was a non-refundable flight otherwise we'd probably have cancelled.  We did have a nice time, though the city and country were closing up around us.  By the 19th the Christmas markets were closed and restaurants and bars were emptying.  We left on the evening of the 20th and hunkered down at home for the Christmas period.  Turkey.   Pork-pie.  Prosecco.   You know the deal. On Christmas Eve I woke up with a slight sore throat and reported as much on the Kings College London Zoe app that I have been using pretty much since the beginning.  I also took a lateral flow test at the same time, which came back negative.  The sore throat was gone by lunch and I thought nothing else of it.  On Christmas Day I received an e-mail from KCL that said, although my symptom was not a Covid key symptom, they invited me to take a PCR test f...