Hula

A couple of years ago I moved from a farmhouse in an isolated fishing village to a Casino on a beach outside Biarritz. I can see the waves from my bed, I can hear them in my sleep. So I've decided it time to learn to surf.I'm starting a little late. Most surfers agree that twelve is about the right age to learn and I'm forty four. But this isn't my first time.....

When I firsty met my husband he invited me down to his home beach in Mumbles, on the Welsh Riviera, for a surf trip. I'd seen the movies, I'd read the magazines, I'd used the washing powder. I knew what to expect. But somewhere half way down the M4 I began to sense that things weren't going according to plan. Not a palm tree in sight, and it was sleeting heavily.By the time we got to Caswell Bay, the sky was dark grey and the water looked like a windswept cappuccino. As I walked across the beach in my wetsuit, it started to snow. But somehow I still imagined that when I dove through the foam, I would emerge into a tropical paradise. I blinked twice, waiting for the Wizard of Oz moment, but nothing had changed.

"Follow me outside," Nick shouted. Which was weird, as I was sure I was outside already. After all it was snowing. But "outside" for a surfer is the place where waves break in perfect tubes of sparkling tourquoise water. Or, in this case, the place where mountains of brown foam come crashing over your head in a nightmarish way. I took one look at "outside" and decided that I didn't like it. I let the first wave sluice me onto the beach and ran back to the car, where we'd left a bottle of whisky for emergencies. I thought this counted.

I spent the next ten years sitting on deserted weather scoured beaches on the West coast of Ireland, breast feeding my children, digging for cockles and collecting seaweed off the rocks, more earth mother than beach bunny. But now I'm living in a place where even dogs and babies surf.So one night in a bar in San Sebastian, round about the fourth bottle of Rioja, I swap a painting for a surfboard with my friend Phil Grace.

It's now or never, I think. The time has come to dust off my grass skirt, and learn to hula dance before it's too late.