Under Investigation

Despite spending the evening as a human buoy in wild, windy surf with rescue tube and Nippers flailing, the wettest June on record here has chewed into the daily recommended dose of beach time. The only upside for this Beach Bum has been the chance to trawl through some goodies that have washed ashore, demanding more investigation.

First off, Surf Nation - a book that sets out to grab the wrist of the surf scene around the UK and Ireland and take it's pulse. Alex Wade, the author, is a fellow convert to Kernow, freelance writer, boxer and surfer who hangs out his wetsuit way down at Sennen. If he was a film, he'd be a Life Less Ordinary. Many of you will be familiar with his most readable blog, also of the same name. An early review of the book - which I suspect is highly unlikely to have been penned by a surfer - comments that "this makes this dip into the world of surfing in Britain and Ireland a hugely niche concern; there's never any premise behind the book beyond Wade travelling around our isles finding people who get stoked by surfing." Well, cut off me legs and call me shorty - this is just the kind of book I want to read. Give me a niche and I'll flick on the torch and go exploring.

Onto music.With a nod to Brian Wilson and describing one track as "not unlike being submerged 20 feet under a rickety harbour, being serenaded by a shoal of fresh-faced mermen" I'm gonna have to check out some of Panda Bear's vibrations very soon.

Don't ask, but my weakness for Nippon has led me down a dark alley to the door of the Surf Coasters. They've played with Dick Dale so don't rush to judge a book, or CD, by the album art.

And talking of the demi-god that is Brian Wilson, I was able to take a look-see at the "If Everybody Had An Ocean" exhibition running at the Tate St.Ives. The "California comes to Cornwall" theme required some serious, heavyweight girders to help suspend belief as we were blown into the gallery by the storm force gales.

There's a diverse collection of art and installations all linked or inspired, at least in the curator's mind, to the main man's music or, paraphrasing the brochure, the social milieu that the Beach Boys music shared with West Coast art. It was the nun that did it for me. That's Sister Corita Kent and her silkscreen prints. Check out the sister, bro.