Steve Shearer February 28, 2009

I picked up some kind of swine flu yesterday.

Tossing and rolling and sweating from the back of the neck I was lucid dreaming of Carroll's big cranium, pure white like the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was jumping up and down, beating me with a bone. But it wasn't a bone, it was a pen. A big fuck-off pen. I was trying to run, to scream but I could do neither. My wife was shaking me: the contest was cancelled due to the tsunami.

I was thinking in biblical terms straight off the bat. What kind of angry God would send a tsunami. What portent of the apocalypse was this? Was the whole Sodom and Gomorrah episode about to be enacted on the Gold Coast? Thirty years of decadence swept into an uncaring ocean?

No...not this time. The next generation will be the one staving off the advance of the sea.

There's some unfinished business from yesterdays proceedings to deal with. And right now seems as good a time to deal with it as any. How do we solve a problem like Andy Irons? Like the Greeks Andy had a glorious period where he assailed all opponents and ushered in a new era. Like Greece his legacy is in ruins, his once haughty confidence a shattered ideal, fading into a dimly remembered past.

This hack prophecised at the end of the 2008 season that Andy was a spent force, that his defeats had been too crushing, too humiliating and that in surrendering so meekly he had forfeited the psychological seedbed of any future comebacks. Whilst Andy has one more shot before knock-out that prophecy has almost certainly come to pass.

In the teeming rain on the hill behind Snapper yesterday I noticed the woman first: the kind of ultra vixenish vamp with a vaguely porn star bearing walking up the hill. She was walking about three paces behind a hunched over man, looking slightly overweight and shuffling awkwardly.

I asked Baddy " Is that.......Andy?"

He has his head down and he looked about as forlorn as a character in a Kafka novel: some inwardly twisted individual consumed by the weight of existential crisis. I know the feeling well.

I wanted to shake the blokes hand, buy him a drink and help him drown his sorrows but I didn't of course. I watched him with not a small amount of cruelty.....so it's your time now hey? His time (Slater's) is over. Boy you sure put your fucken foot in it Andy.

Baddy rushed over and shook his hand, and when Andy lifted his head he looked fifty years old. Like if he took off his white trainers and tight T-shirt and slipped on a beard and shitty clothes he could get a start as one those homeless bums in Dane Reynolds Blog. Fancy that as a retirement plan for Andy!

Jordy can't close.One of my favourite posts from the much lamented PostSurf blog concerns the lack of ability of Jordy to really just let out his animal arrogance, turn the ego up to 11 and let rip. In a ribald and fully developed sexual metaphor he describes Jordy, full to the overflowing with carnal, manly energy delivering the final stroke so to speak on both wave and willing groupie. There's something deeply unsatisfying in Jordy's World Tour career so far, some failure to deliver the money shot on cue. He's got to stamp his authority on this event....there's no more excuses.

The long-term forecast is looking diabolically interesting, with several tantalising prospects on the edge of the waiting period.

I've uploaded a video of Dane Reynolds first heat, in between surfing the tsunami and sweating on the couch.

Oh yeah, small swallows seem to have replaced squash tails as the tail of choice amongst professional surfers: no worries, don't mention it.

The Outsiders past articles:

Trials Day

Day One