Standing up at last, by Joanne Hindle

An original contemporary memoir extract.

I bought my first wetsuit the week I turned forty-three, in a surf shop in Cornwall where the assistant was young enough to be my son and politely pretended not to notice me struggling with the zip. My plan was simple: a week of lessons, then I would stand up on a board, tick it off my list and go back to being sensible.

The surf school met at nine each morning on the beach. There were eight of us in my group, and I was the oldest by at least twenty years. Before we went anywhere near the water, our instructor, Ben, made us practise on the sand: lie flat, paddle with cupped hands, then spring to our feet in one movement. ‘The pop-up,’ he called it. I called it impossible.

For three days the sea defeated me. I nosedived, I was rolled over and over in the foam like washing, and once the board came back on its leash and hit me on the chin. On the Wednesday evening I sat in the car park eating chips and seriously considered going home.

On the Thursday morning the waves were smaller and the water was green and glassy. Ben pushed my board into a gentle wave, shouted ‘Now!’ and suddenly I was standing, wobbling, riding a ribbon of white water all the way to the shallows. It lasted perhaps six seconds. I have never been prouder of anything in my life, and I have been surfing every summer since.

(a) How many people were in the writer’s surf group? (b) What did Ben call the movement of springing to your feet? (c) Give one thing that went wrong for the writer during the first three days.