Live Life Better – Page 2 – Live The Life You Love

Let’s be clear – I absolutely love the water, I am a water baby, in a previous life I was possibly a dolphin and Finding Nemo is one of my favourite films ever. I am a seriously ok sailor, a pretty competent long distance open-water swimmer, I can sort-of surf and I could windsurf (at a push, if required, under duress). All of these require a reasonable level of strength, skill and stamina.

None of them, and I mean, none of them come close to how hard it is to master kitesurfing. I keep being told that Tarifa one of the hardest places in the world to learn to kitesurf, but that doesn’t really help when you’re being washed up on the beach for the umpteenth time.

The wind here is so powerful (averaging 30kts) and the waves are so big (all the more so when you’re only 5ft 3″) with a strong current, that even getting into the water alone is quite a physical feat. And all the while holding a not un-heavy board in one hand and flying a six or eight metre kite on the end of 25 metres of string with the other hand; a kite which ducks, dives and cartwheels around in the sky like a peregrine falcon on acid.

You then have to lie down in the water, keep the kite aloft with one hand, secure the board to your feet with the other, and stay afloat with waves breaking over your head. Your eyes sting, half the sea goes up your nose and you still have to keep that bloody peregrine falcon under some semblance of control.

Gasping for air, spluttering and blinking furiously, the next stage is to power up the kite whilst you’re semi-submerged and generate enough power to propel you out of the water with a forward momentum, but not too much to send you flying.

It’s is good job that I am a water baby, as I have been washed up on the beach face down, face up, head first, feet first, and if I didn’t have a wetsuit on, I’d probably have been washed up inside out too.

The internet is full of “hot babes” kitesurfing in string bikini bottoms and triangle tops – these surely must be either superglued in place or they’re merely click bait fodder.

There’s an awful lot to be said about what an empowering sport kitesurfing is for women, particularly as once mastered, it is a sport of skill and technique rather than mere brute strength and balls, but this is not a sport where one tends to look ones best, particularly when learning. It’s definitely more drowned look than wet look – and let’s be honest here, a wetsuit is friend to few middle-aged females (and men too!).

Stoicism, though, is one’s friend when learning to kite. As is pig headed determination and a smattering of tenacity. And a massage. And arnica. And alcohol.

A major breakthrough today! I rode for thirty metres to port and it was AMAZING! And then a big gust came, the peregrine falcon puffed and yanked me into the air, dragging me about 20 metres along the water – leaving my board, which had turned turtle whilst smacking me in the shins for good measure, somewhere upwind behind me.

It was my first jump, my teacher said. I’m really not sure I should repeat what I said. I submarined to starboard. It took me fifteen minutes to body drag to retrieve my board. I have five new bruises and a little nick on the sole of my foot which is exasperatingly tender.

As one of my friends says, it is definitely character building. I have got this. I can do this. I will own this. Just please god, let it be soon…

Reassuringly, everyone I have met in the the kitesurfing community has been utterly helpful, supportive and lovely. I have to believe this is because the learning curve is so high it weans out all the wankers along the way and thus the sport self selects only the very best of people.

Tonight though, with tender arms, a bruised ego (and thighs), aching bones, half the sea still coming out of my nose and really attractive red eyes, I’m going to go out and get rip-roaringly drunk with my friends…because somedays there comes a time that, no matter what challenge or conundrum you’re facing, the answer is always ‘more wine please’.

And I will go to bed, utterly trolleyed, with a huge smile plastered across my face because this is the life I have chosen to live and I’m living a life I love.

Choose happy. Love, Sophie, Tiggy & The Beast X

P.S: No, Tiggy doesn’t come kitesurfing, she stays at home and listens to the radio or has a playdate with her boyfriend, Filipo the boxer, who lives downstairs. And The Beast is making lots of new friends too. He’s particularly fond of this fire engine…

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

Dr Seuss

On a crisp and bright Monday morning six months ago, in a sun drenched office and in the very briefest of conversations, I was made redundant. It was a total shock and completely out of the blue; one minute I was on a packed commuter train, running late for an early meeting, the next I was in an empty carriage homeward bound, more than a little dazed and wondering what on earth to do with myself for the rest of the day, let alone the coming weeks and months of my gardening leave.

The first week was taken care of as I spent most of it having a minor meltdown – panicking about what on earth to do next, especially as I was on the verge of signing up to a huge new mortgage to buy a very small mews house in Notting Hill. I also really missed my team – they made a reasonably stressful job utterly delightful, and I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to any of them. It was a bit like being dumped by a boyfriend and knowing he was still going to see all of your friends, all of the time, but without you. My heart was tinged with sadness.

After a little over a week of wallowing in self pity, drinking lots of tea and fixating over motivational quotes on Instagram (which, let’s face it, simply gets rather dull and far too worthy after a while), I decided to take the bull by the horns and use this opportunity to completely change my life. I just didn’t feel ready to throw myself back into the corporate world and all that it entailed, in fact I felt queasy at the mere thought of it. Sometimes, I thought, you just have to throw everything up into the stars and see where fate determines you should land. And lo and behold, the cards slowly started to move in my favour. The headhunters I spoke to didn’t really have any enticing jobs on their books and citing Brexit, the buyers pulled out of my house. This transpired to be the perfect turn of events, as being shackled to a huge mortgage would have scuppered any financial freedom I had and forced me into finding a meaty, salaried role as soon as my gardening leave was over. So instead of selling my house, I rented it out and reassigned my stamp duty savings into my newly formed Adventure Fund.

Then came the next big question – if I wasn’t going to get another ‘big’ job then WTF should I actually do? I had worked pretty much non-stop for the last 23 years. And I liked working, I was good at it, I’d always had jobs I’d really enjoyed and I liked earning a lot of money and spending it. Rightly or wrongly my job was an important part of who I was a person, it defined me. So, if I didn’t have a job, then who would I be? What would I stand for? Could my ego cope with not saying ‘I’m the CMO of…’ when asked?

An old personal trainer used to really wind me up by telling me many times over that “great things never come from inside your comfort zone”. Oddly enough I never found it helpful to hear that when I was puce with exertion, my thighs screaming doing ‘only ten more’ reps. But, with this in mind, I consciously chose to see my redundancy as the expiration date of my old life and the turning point to set my sails on a different course for my future. I made myself a promise, that I would live a life worth living according to what was important to me, as opposed to merely making a living.

It only took fifteen trips to the tip, ten trips and countless boxes to the charity shop to de-clutter sixteen years of stuff from my home. But hey, I had time on my hands to do it. At one point, every dress in the Trinity Hospice shop window was one of mine, which filled me with a mix of pride, satisfaction and a tinge of regret (damn it, I wish I’d kept that Pucci dress).

I had a digital de-clutter too and, not without a heavy heart, unsubscribed from a plethora of marketing emails. Bye-bye Matches Fashion, Net-A-Porter and J Crew, hello budget.

I have had one self-indulgent splurge on a fully renovated 1969 Series IIa Land Rover, called The Beast due to the fact that he’s so heavy to park. (Toned arms, it transpires, are an added side benefit of a two and a half ton landy with no power steering.) I did a half-day mechanic course on his internal workings – I know where he needs water, oil and can locate the manual diesel pump and battery. And I purchased curious sounding things like a bottle jack. (Not that I intend to use any of my new found knowledge as, much to the relief of my course teacher, I have paid for comprehensive European breakdown cover.)
The Beast, proudly sporting a black and silver GB sticker on his bottom, feels safe – he can’t go more than 60mph and is remarkably easy to drive once underway, which is handy as we’ll be driving on the wrong side of the road for most of the year.

So where to go and what to do? First stop, Tarifa, via ferry, Santander, Salamanca and Seville. Why Tarifa? Well, I have friends there and I’m not yet quite brave enough to go somewhere where I don’t know anyone at all. Plus, it’s simply lovely.

For the keen cartographers amongst you, Tarifa can be found at precisely 36 degrees latitude. It’s a beautiful, old, Moorish walled town and is the southernmost point of Continental Europe, where the Mediterranean collides with the Atlantic, and looks across the Straits of Gibraltar to Africa. The Costa Del Crime or “No Carbs Before Marbs” scene it is absolutely not. It gets very, very, very windy and is the kitesurfing mecca of Europe. And conquering kitesurfing is what I’m going to do. There is a stunning, five mile long, sandy, crescent shaped beach for walking Tiggy, the restaurants are very dog friendly and a decent glass of Rioja costs a mere two euros.

It’s Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, time and time again and expecting a different result.

Who am I to argue with such genius? Making a big life change and walking away from the corporate world (particularly the salary) is a bit scary, but you know what’s even scarier? Regret.

And what will I say now, when people ask me what I do? Well, I’ve had six months of gardening leave to practise. “I’m on eternity leave”, I shall reply, which is completely and utterly impossible to say without an enormous smile.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading about our adventures as much as we’ll enjoy living them. For more pictures and fewer words, please do feel free to follow us on Instagram @sophielovespink

Love,

Sophie, Tiggy & The Beast X

Category: Live Life Better

All the gear, no idea: learning to kitesurf #LikeABoss

This is it, adventure awaits…