I’ve a bunch of watersports DVDs that I have, some of which came free with magazines and some of which I bought. Apart from the Whitelines snowboarding one which was average, I really like all of them, because they are pure escapism. When you’re sitting in a freezing cold Dublin, there’s a lot to be said for dragging out a Cabrinha DVD and watching Andre Philip ripping it up in Antigua, or the guys on Escape from Pressure ripping it up all over the world including the one place I really want to go which is the Cocos Islands. In the sunshine. You could be negative and feel jealous or you could be positive and say feckit, I’m going to go there.

If people have surf/windsurf/kitesurf DVDs that they got free from the front of magazines that are functioning as coasters, gathering dust that they don’t want any more, send them my way. I’ll more than make use of them. Don’t really care how old they are provided they are predominantly action and not so much interview. The best surf DVD I own is probably the Customs DVD that came “free” with the Billabong Odyssey DVD. Yeah, the big waves were cool but still….

Le principe est simple, il suffit de laisser vos cheveux sécher à l’air libre… vous qui n’aimez pas les coiffures ultra sophistiquées qui nécéssitent à la fois de maîtriser une certaine technique et du temps, vous voilà comblée. Cette coiffure zéro effort et maxi effet est la coupe qu’il vous faut.

All these years I’ve been doing the right thing. Letting my hair dry except on those occasions where I wanted to impress someone tall dark and handsome.

The thing is, stupidly, it doesn’t actually tell me what the suitable cut actually is. I mean, fringe, or no fringe. I have a fringe that is “too long” at the moment, but the hair dressers are all busy (recession, what recession…oh we don’t have recessions on Fridays, that’s fine then).

It just says “feck your hair away to hell, it’s not like you care, right?”

This is an exact combination of useless to me. The sun is in and out and in and out and in and out so much so that frankly it’s confusing me. The reality is not matching the forecast anywhere near adequately. Meh.

But I have plans for this evening when the tide in and the sun is going down. I don’t know where those plans are yet – Portmarnock or Dun Laoghaire probably.

Apart from the fact that it is one of the greatest windsurfing films made – I don’t think I am alone in saying that – there’s a great music sound track. It’s as a result of Escape from Pressure that I wound up searching for a track called Escape from Pressure on iTunes (it’s by the At Home Project if you’re interested), and also buying an album by Uusi Fantasia. All obscure music that is a) brilliant and b) unknown here.

Watersports DVDs are hot for this kind of stuff. The Billabong Odyssey DVD came with a free freestyling DVD called Customs which I’ve watched more often than I have the one I paid 27.99 for.

There’s some great stuff on the kitesurfing DVDs as well. One of the Cabrinha ones, Catalyst, has really good stuff on it and Cabrinha have thoughtfully put most of that online if you want to see it. They also have a short clip for their 2010 gear which has a terrific track on it which I’ve so far failed to identify. Click on 2010 Switchblade and feast your ears on something or other.

It’s all Cabrinha’s fault. And Andre Phillip. It’s his fault more than anything. I have him on FaceBook (just don’t ask why) and he posted a link to a new Cabrinha video link pushing the 2010 Switchblade kites. The clip was filmed in Antigua.

This is not anything new of course – quite a lot of Catalyst was done in Antigua as well – but on the day in question, the weather was not all that great, I couldn’t lay my hands on a piano and frankly the thoughts of dropping everything to go to Antigua and play in Andre Phillip’s slider park were very attractive.

So I did some thinking. I was supposed to go on holidays in November but we can “delay” that and maybe go at New Year’s Eve instead. I’ve worked the last 4. So I went to see how you might get to Antigua from Ireland and discovered you fly to the UK and give British Airways or Virgin Atlantic quite a lot of money and after about 10 hours you wind up on Antigua.

If you want to go for NYE, that is. BA came back with something like two and a half grand from Dublin including an Aer Lingus flight to London. Virgin came back with nearer three grand. And that was before I discovered something I hadn’t know. Antigua is popular for weddings and honeymoons which sucks if you’re travelling on your own to go play in a slider park. Repeated requests for hotel accommodation came back with fantastic figures, such as 6000E.

Eeek. NYE not such a hot deal for Antigua then.

But I am nothing if not determined and when one of my friends saw this yesterday, she is equally determined that I go. Just not for New Year’s Eve. I am not looking at going at the start of February before the schools in Ireland are looking for holidays. I can work the flights more easily around then, and now all I have to do is pick kitesurfing brains for accommodation that is not designed for the ultimate in Romantic Honeymoons because a) I’m single and b) not getting married any time soon but that is designed to be near the kite beaches.

So if you know anything…including Dre’s phone number, I’m all open.

I am so up for this. The summer has been spent doing stuff that was not a) kitesurfing or b) kitesurfing photography because I have just had so much other stuff on the go. Boo to that too. I have been slagged by a few people for not making it out. The one suitable day I wound up taking photographs. I have zero confidence and am mightily cheesed off about this. The other day I drove to Cork to go kitesurfing – that’s a 3 hour drive – in the hope that the wind would cooperate and stay cross on. It did not. It swung around to directly off shore so I didn’t get to go kitesurfing. I was mightily cheesed off by that too. The friend I have down there was very sorry on my behalf. Bad things happen, I said but bad things are happening far too often and I have so little confidence about flying a kite now that I’ll be back to square one soon.

I want to go kitesurfing for New Year’s Eve. Don’t give a toss where although Tarifa is an option as is Tenerife. But either options require me being able to kitesurf before I get there and frankly I’ll need the weather to swing around SE for me if I’m to get water time in Dublin, else, feck it anyway.