Please leave the beach!

Is it just me, or does everyone think they look really great in bathers?

So good in fact, that you want to parade around in front of strangers? Jogging Pamela Anderson style along the shoreline? Repeatedly getting on all fours with your butt in the air?

Oh yeah! Me too!

Yesterday morning, the girls and I started surfing lessons. I grew up in Margaret River. I've lived on the Sunshine Coast for eight years. And finally, I get round to learning to surf.

I bought a board about three years ago, in the vain and ridiculous hope that I could teach myself (therefore avoiding the public-display-of-swimsuit indignity) but it's just not that simple. Not for me, anyway.

I can paddle out no worries. I can sit on my board (it's a nine foot mal, Marlon Brando, God rest his soul, could have sat his lardy ass on my board). And I can catch a wave.

But can I stand up? Can I even get to my knees? No. So while I've owned a board for three years, I've spent less than three hours in the water with it.

But I've got good news. In a forty five minute class with Robbie and Carlene Sherwell yesterday (I had to leave early...everyone else enjoyed the full 90 minutes) I learned that everything I had been doing up to now is wrong.

I learned a new technique for getting to my feet, and I can't wait to go back this morning to put it all into practice at Mooloolaba...shut up...it's big swell today!!!!

As for the public display of unsightly thigh and bodacious bottom? Rest easy, there won't be photos!!!

And I don't care how old or unspeakable YOUR rear end is. If you live on the coast and haven't called Robbie and Carlene yet - what are you waiting for?????