Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers

Doing nothing is making certain you lose. Which is just gutless.

Surfers travelled and opened up and changed. It became more mainstream, less of a cult. And it diversified. On any given day in the water now I'll meet three generations of surfers, male and female, everyone sporting a different craft. I started surfing in the 60s and I can tell you it's infinitely more diverse. It might be more crowded but it's also more interesting.

Humour's the pay-off for all that existential horror.

And you can't help but worry for them, love them, want for them - those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.

Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.

We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.