I Love To Turn You On

I watched Invictus the other evening. Generally I have a little gripe with Clint’s movies, they sort of shout out at me that my heart strings are being tugged at mercilessly, that the characters will do just what is expected of them and that there will be an honest and venerable ethnic minority person who shows the white man up for his oafishness. Well as a white oaf I am happy to be led in many ways and have to confess that the Invictus movie took me on a ride which I loved at every turn. It maybe my soulful and unerring love of the sport of Rugby which allowed my ducts to well up with ease throughout the film, but in essence I completely enjoyed the movie.

Well there was one problem - there was a whole scene of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa omitted from the film - we all know about it, the press kind of tried to keep it a secret but true Rugby followers have this story in their lore, deep and well understood.

Early on in the Rugby World Cup there was a secret meeting between Nelson Mandela and Will Carling. Notes taken by presidential aides confirm that Mandela asked, nay demanded that Carling’s men throw their semi-final to New Zealand and deliberately miss tackles on the useless and lumbering Lomu to make him appear good. It is well known in Rugby circles that England could have walked off with the Cup with ease - everyone knows that!!

Well Carling, under pressure from the RFU bowed to Mandela’s demands and Rugby history was made when the Boks lifted the cup.

It would have been nice if Eastwood had remembered the magnanimous gesture of the English team and recorded that for all to know.

Om my god I thought to myself as I drove along. Funnily I am back to using a N95 again, after a couple of years with Windows Touchscreen devices and more recently the wondrous HTC Hero.
Well the voice comes on the radio and announces free voice navigation from now on with my Nokia N95.
I have to tell you that the N95 still stands out as a superb piece of kit. Even having used ‘more advanced’ gadgets since first falling in love with the N95.

So I am happy about that, my return to Symbian and the easy way in which the phone works, its easy operability and ruggedness - so a free upgrade to the Sat Nav was a great concept.
I visit therefore Nokia Maps Updater online and look forward to updating my phone with a certain pride that it is still the ‘dogs’.
Then Nokia hits me with its bombshell - please select model - it is apparently only available on selected models.
I try in vain, downloading the app anyway and installing when it warns that it is not compatible with my phone… and indeed it is not.
Oh, the disappointment, I was so buoyed by Nokia’s forward thinking ( loyalty can be purchased by such moves ) that I spent a while uninstalling the Ovi Maps and transferring all my Nokia data to a new PC I have… Only to find this.
I guess I will have to source some other Sat Nav for the Nokia.
Most saddened by whole affair.

Surfing is great fun, anyone who has slipped into the sea with a board knows that. It is a spiritual experience, bringing you closer to nature.

But there is a darker side too, nature is savage and anyone who wants to ride the wild sea must pit themselves against brutal and harsh elements on a regular basis.

Now, I am writing this as a warning to those not in the know. You have all read about the precipitous drop in at the Mavericks, we all know about the vicious reef beneath the Pipeline’s azure hues and we have all seen recent footage from Jaws. But for some of us, in our own backyard, there is a break so dangerous, so hostile and so unpredictable that only the foolhardy would paddle out into its apparently benign break.
I am talking about the Hotpipes in Shoreham - UK.

Here nature’s forces are funnelled into a maelstrom which makes the slab at Teahupoo look like a longboarding grom’s wet dream. On the South Coast of sleepy Sussex gargantuan waves break over a reef of razor sharp coral and scrap metal. The prevailing onshore winds lash the surface into a frenzy or churning mush which means that the waves are not only unsurfable but any slight error is generally punished severely.

Moreover the break is patrolled ( I can not say surfed as these locals know the stupidity of entering the Shoreham waters ) by a gang of out of work welders with severe personality disorders. Not having the politeness of Sir Ken Bradshaw these types will bite a chunk from your board while it is still on the roof of your car. Needless to say car crime is rife in this area and it is a designated police ‘no go zone‘.

mean local surf dude at the hotpipes

As if things could not conspire more to make this place a spot to bookmark under the heading : do not surf here; there is more. It has recently been discovered that Shoreham Port Authority has been laundering Russian Uranium at the Power Station and the Geiger Counters go off the scale down at ‘the Pipes’. This radiation in the water has led to severe mutations amongst the indigenous shark population.

So, please take it from me. Do not venture down to, perhaps, the nastiest break on the planet. This is really a place to avoid.

This article was originally submitted to Magic Seaweed, but they, strangely did not want to publish this denouément of such a break.

Like OMG, how mant iterations does one have to go through to find a name for a new media company.
Last year we brainstormed this, finding many obscure and wonderful words - only to find them already taken. Eventually even an exhaustive search of foregin words drew a blank.

Trouble is the massive number of creative and digital agencies who have already undergone this process - looking for a catchy, easy to spell and inspiring name to brand themselves with.
It is almost tempting to go for luck and use a generator like :http://adactio.com/extras/newmediagenerator/.
I have searched exhaustively through thinks which inspire me: surfing, sea, sun, Greece, Nietschze, clarity, sincerity, simpleness, candour but the similies and synonymns are already synonymous with existing companies.
Maybe I will just stick an “i” infront of a word.
iDare.