The Endless Summer

We've been having something of an endless summer here in London. It was a misty nineteen degrees on the balcony on both Saturday and Sunday over the weekend, with the Thames swishing gently like the Med often does at first light. More reasons to postpone the de-commissioning of our barbecue for the winter.

Il Surfero upped and went to Sennen this weekend and we are looking forward to his blog post and pictures. A while back he recommended to us Bruce Brown's classic surf movie from '66, and this Sunday morning we found ourselves being thoroughly absorbed by it. It's not just a surf movie, it's a kind of boys-own adventure, not quite as non-PC as Tintin, but getting there. I doubt you could make a movie like this today; everything that is fun, fresh and charmingly cheesey in Brown's film would surely come across as commercial and arrogant today. It only cost $50,000 too.

The two surfers following the sunshine and waves around the globe are recognisably first generation moderns, and there is an often poignant innocence about both their own world and the far away coastlines that they set about initiating in the way of the board. The scenes at Cape St Francis in South Africa come close to being surfer porn. V loved it, chuckling in particular at Mike's little radio and when Brown wistfully urged his audience to "think of the thousands of waves that went to waste," before Homo Surfensis arrived on this unique stretch of coast.