The Soul of a Surfer

Embracing the beautiful meaningless.

Shameless subjectivity on how embracing the vacuity of surfing and other apparently pointless activities can inspire, create and define a boundlessly fulfilled existence.

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Michael was born in East London in 1968, left school in 1984 and never had a proper job. He started surfing in 1986 whilst living in Queensland during a six year global wander. He returned home to study anthropology in his mid twenties and became obsessed with war zones, waves and London. Throughout the nineties he scratched a living by writing about all these things. By the middle of that decade he scored a jumped-up title on the flannel panel at Dazed and Confused, and used that as a magic carpet to take him to places where he could indulge his various obsessions.

In 1999 he launched Adrenalin Magazine, thereby blagging his way around the world for another six years. In 2002 Michael married Lucy. They were blessed with three children in five years, in the middle of which time they moved to Somerset to live in a tiny village dominated by the Church Wardens and 300 head of cattle.

Whilst his fellow villagers are convinced he is on a Witness Protection Programme, he published The September Project in 2007 and The Book of Surfing: the killer guide to surf culture in 2008. Michael is currently writing a novel set in California in the year 1969, as well as a series of stories about Kosovo and Bosnia, and loads of travel, interviews and other types of hackery.

He is considering going back to study theology.

No, really.