A War Within. Living with PTSD.

This week I'm going a little bit "off message" and shifting the focus away from sunny happy surfy stuff, to a much darker, more serious and important issue; that of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

My friend James Allen has just aced his degree in Press and Editorial Photography at University College Falmouth and his final year project has been picked up and shared by a number of top end photography journals, websites and was exhibited in London last week.    James decided to tackle the difficult subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which required him to build relationships with sufferers over long periods of time before they were comfortable being photographed and interviewed.  His subjects ranged from former soldiers to victims of domestic violence or people involved in tragic and unforgettable accidents.  Before I pass the baton to James's images and captions, I'll finish on one key statistic that struck me from his work:  More British veterans of the Falklands War and First Gulf War committed suicide than were killed in action.  That's not the Second Gulf War.  Just consider that for a moment then click through to James' website to view the full set of images and accompanying text which explains the issue far more succinctly than it's possible for me to here.

"This body of work aims to empower my subjects, giving them a voice and educating the viewer, thereby reducing the stigma associated with this mental health issue. The images are captioned by text extracted from my interviews so as to allow the viewer to hear their voices, to sense their anger and despair, but also feel hope and new life."

James Allen, June 2012

 “The imagery of Iraq that bombarded my mind was so detailed that I could paint scenes from my mind. I knew the colour of cars, the height of buildings. I could smell the dead people we had shot. I could see the bodies and the thick congealed blood on the floor. It was like a fish had been gutted. I could see the dead Iraqi soldiers, their eyes staring at me, and I was powerless in my dreams to fight back any threat. I was in such a helpless state.”

 “I attempted to commit suicide. My wife found me with a 9mm Glock in my mouth. I was paranoid - I kept arms and ammunition at home and built up a big Arsenal. It wasn’t a fun place to be really, but the culmination of it was that I tried to kill me self. My wife walked through the door as I was about to do the honours. Her face basically stopped me.”

 “I can’t begin to tell you how many soldiers I’ve worked with that have lost everything - wives, partners and even the rights to see their children. Without a doubt, the hardest part of my journey was losing my family. It wasn’t until I lost them I realised I had a serious problem and had to ask for help.”

 “It’s PTSD; you live with something that happened twenty years ago - you still cry about it. You can’t stop, because you’re still not over it. You’re not allowed the space to, because you’re not allowed to talk about it. Even with therapists you start talking about the gory details and they cover their mouths with shock. They’re anxious because they don’t want to hear the really horrid bits. I was seventeen when I went to the doctors to tell him that I’d been raped. He just patted me on the head. It’s shocking.”

“ I think there’s a problem with PTSD because its become a word synonymous with soldiers. People don’t understand that it might be in the domestic sphere as well. It’s the day you realise your totally out of control and that’s the case the next day and the day after that. It’s a repeated pattern; you can’t make yourself or your family safe. And you won’t be safe next year, and at some point you acknowledge that you’re going to be killed, and I don’t know where you go from there. Once you believe that your going to die I don’t know how you can ever believe in anything different. As a consequence I can’t change my behaviour, in that respect it’s probably very similar to a soldier in a war zone because you are scared your going to be killed today. Its fear, I’m just fearful, they used to call it battered wife syndrome.”

 “It was when I was fourteen years old - there was an accident in the back garden involving some petrol near a barbeque. It caught fire and because it was next to my little sister I tried to prevent an accident and threw the bottle away from her ... it ended up hitting a little lad who caught fire from the flames of the petrol. So I chased after him to get him on the ground and roll him around to stop the flames spreading any more ... I jumped on top of him and rolled him around to put out the flames.”

“At first I was depressed because people were blaming me, saying it was my fault - that I’d done it on purpose. I started to experience flashbacks about it - I felt like I was reliving the moment over and over again, seeing certain things. Flames can set me off on a flashback. Just being asleep in the middle of the night I feel like I am reliving it; I can smell the flesh burning and I feel like I’m burning up myself. I see pictures in my mind of what happened.”

My Favourite Stretch

I thought I'd share one of my favourite stretches with you this week.  I think a lot of us take flexibility for granted, and it's only when you've let it slip that you realise how good you had it.  When I spent my days surf coaching I'd always start each session with a thorough warm-up for the group of, more often than not, rather un-flexible clients.  Through the summer season I'd do this roughly three times per day and surf as well, so by the time October rolled around and I ran off to Indonesia I was pretty paddle fit and flexible.  This winter I spent a fair bit of time out of the water for various reasons, and I'm definitely noticing the effects of losing a degree of my flexibility.  Even just doing a few stretches for ten minutes each day can keep your general level of flexibility high, and in the long run do your overall fitness a world of good.  It's particularly important in the middle of winter, pre-surf or climb, to make sure that your cold muscles are warmed up so that you don't damage them, just as Benny is demonstrating above.  It doesn't matter if the waves are going off, take 5 minutes minimum to warm up to make sure that you have a good surf and don't prone your second wave in to the beach with a pulled muscle.

The gluteus maximus is the massive muscle that basically makes up your bum.  It runs from the top of your bum down and around the top of your leg to attach somewhere around the outside of your knee.
That's a lot of muscle to stretch.  To do so, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.  Put one foot on the other thigh then reach through and grasp behind that thigh with both hands and pull back so that your remaining foot lifts off the floor.  You can use your elbow to push the knee of the leg being stretched flat and get a bit more out of the stretch.  Hold this position and breath into it; you can kind of move the stretch around and you'll feel different areas of tightness being slowly worked out.  Then swap and do the other leg.

 

Get 'em Started Young

Just imagine if, from the very moment that you could put one foot in front of the other and call it walking rather than falling over, you had been getting in the sea.  And if your Dad and all of his friends surfed and some of them were pretty well renowned surf coaches?  The odds would be fairly good that you'd grow up feeling comfortable in waves I suppose, to say the least.  


Theo, you'd better let us all get some waves in a few years time...




DISCLAIMER:  If any of you are concerned for young Theo's well being, I'll put your mind at ease.  He was laughing and having the best time when this image was taken, and Mum and Dad were stood just out of shot.  From what I hear, since this occasion he now asks to fly to the sea rather than walk.

Explore

ex·plore

verb /ikˈsplôr/  explored, past participle; explored, past tense; explores, 3rd person singular present; exploring, present participle Travel in or through (an unfamiliar country or area) in order to learn about or familiarize oneself with it - the best way to explore Iceland's northwest - explore the world of science and technology Search for resources such as mineral deposits - the company explored for oil Inquire into or discuss (a subject or issue) in detail - he sets out to explore fundamental questions Examine or evaluate (an option or possibility) - you continue to explore new ways to generate income

We had to rent the car.  There was plenty of swell about but it was at a funny angle and seemed to be marching straight past all of the spots within a walk or hitch-hike of where we were staying.  There were also massive tides to contend with and on our first evening (and best surf of the trip) a giant harvest moon rose above the mountains at sunset, a sure sign that there'd be a lot of water moving around over the next few days.


So we drove.  We drove north up the coast and we drove south down the coast, bearing west off the main road down every lane and goat track that we could find looking for waves.  We had a map and some whispered advice and hunches to go on, and it was a far better bet than sitting around at base camp drinking mint tea, watching and waiting.  We didn't score any epic waves because every spot that we found to the north was suffering from the same unlucky combination of swell and tide that were ruling out our first choices, and further to the south on the northern fringes of the Sahara desert the  land-sea breeze whipped up by the powerful sun on sand was vicious.


It was by no means a fruitless couple of days though because for all of the unread pages left in our books we gained a hoard of priceless information.  Fishermen in little villages told us about the waves that keep their boats on the beach, we confirmed the locations of several hinted at secret spots and we bumped into a photographer who I'd met a year previously in Sri Lanka who drew us a mud-map to a really good and really hard to find right hander.  
Our michelin road map is now covered in scribbles about set-ups, directions and optimum swell direction, winds and tides for a multitude of surf breaks that don't appear in the guide books.  


All the result of a couple of days crammed in a hot hire care and a good old fashioned spirit of exploration, and a very good reason to go back next time a good swell appears on the horizon.

 "STOP", we presumed.

On the right day... 

Donkey in the Spring growth. 

Beached Blue Boats. 

A sure sign that you've driven to the edge of the desert, and probably the limit of your hire car's capabilities.

Desert panorama. 

"Bierut-by-the-sea" which looked like it could get all time, and sometimes does from what the local fishermen told us...

Nature Tastes Delicious

"I love nature.  It tastes delicious."

This is one of my favourite quotes of the year so far.  It came from my housemate Matt in the middle of a dinner table debate about spurious supermarket meat and vegetarianism, and it sums up our household's eating habits fairly well.

Rabbit is dead cheap if you buy it from your local butcher, but it's even cheaper if you have a friend who has an air rifle (and license) and know a few farmers.  In fact, that way it's free plentiful because, well, they breed like rabbits don't they?  A few friends of mine lived off rabbit for a whole summer, just substituting it in for chicken in everyday recipes.  I found a dead easy recipe by Jamie Oliver where you stick the whole rabbit, a load of un-peeled veg and a bottle of beer into a casserole and slow cook it for 12 hours.  Then you put on a pair of rubber gloves and mush what comes out into a new pan, picking out the vegetable skin and rabbit bones.  It's called 12-hour rabbit bolognese, it doesn't even taste like rabbit and you ought to try it.


The same friend also stalks deer in season and so every now and then we get a supermarket carrier bag full of venison sausages and a roast dropped round.  Venison has been getting a lot of good press recently for having the highest protein and lowest cholesterol content of any major meat, as well as being completely free range and sustainable.  If you get a chance to get your hands on some venison then I'd thoroughly recommend it, and if you happen to be in West Australia be sure to check out the Margaret River Venison Farm.

A few years ago I made a lobster snare to take spear fishing with me, in the hope of wrestling a few big crustaceans out of the cracks in the rock.  No such luck just yet, but we have thrown a lobster pot over the side of the boat a few times so far this year, left it a few days and then hauled it in.  Pulling the pot up from the depths is like waiting to get a roll of film developed, waiting to see what comes out.  We've had a few edible crab, some spider crab, juvenile dogfish (a small shark that we threw back) and, deep joy, a few lobster.


But this is what we tend to pull in loads of around the Cornish coast this time of year.  Mackerel.  Loads of them, unless there're a lot of dolphins about in which case they eat them all first.  Fishing for sea bass and bream is a lot more rewarding...when you actually get a fish.  Drop a line with some mackerel feathers into the sea however, either off the rocks at mid tide or over the side of a boat and you'll struggle to reel your line in fast enough.  Gut, slash three or four times on either side, oil, salt, pepper and onto a hot bbq grill later that day or evening.  Fresh, filling and free.

What's the point of all of this?  Well wherever you live, be it in the middle of a city, amidst the fields and woods of the countryside or next to the sea, you can eat pretty well.  Vegetable patches, pots and planters, window boxes, organic vegetable box delivery services, a good local butcher, a decent fishmonger, a fishing rod...the list goes on.  You can eat really, really, well if you grow, catch, kill or buy what's in season (asparagus, radishes, broad beans, crab, mackerel and seabass right now in the uk), it might just take a bit of forethought, some planning, and in the case of skinning and gutting rabbits a poor sense of smell or a strong stomach.

Images from top to bottom:

• Herbs and my annual "tallest sunflower" entries on the kitchen windowsill, a.k.a. "The garden of death".
• One for the pot, Cornwall, Spring evening 2012.
• The Polbilly lobster pot delivers dinner and a marine biology lesson.
• Catch of the day on a Padstow fishing boat.
• Dinner.
• The simplest Summer dinner?

Joe Round Britain

Joe Leach is a straight up legend of a human being.  He is currently approaching the halfway point of a 2,500 mile marine litterpick whilst he attempts to break the record for the fastest solo unsupported circumnavigation of mainland Britain.  

Joe set off from Falmouth, Cornwall just before 7.30am on May 2nd and paddled around the Lizard Peninsula and Land's End on day one.  Any of you who are familiar with the Cornish coast will get an idea of just what a big challenge Joe has taken on and the sort of top-rate paddler that he is to be able to take on even just the first day of what is expected to be an eighty day marathon.  On day two he came out of the gates just as hard and made it from the far south-west of the county up to Polzeath, a distance of 45 nautical miles (50 "normal" miles) which is massive for a single hit.  

My housemate Matt stood on the wet sand at the water's edge in the dark and flashed his headtorch across the bay towards Stepper Point.  Way off in the distance, just outside the black shadow of the headland came a series of flashes in response.  Joe hauled up on the beach just after 10pm and dropped his daily catch of 3 pieces of marine litter into our bin then ate a mackerel the size of a small whale and a lot of brown rice and crashed out on our sofa for the night. The next morning he got up at 6am and carried on to Lundy Island.  

Approaching Lundy Island on Day 3.

And he's kept on pushing.  Every day he scoops three pieces of litter out of the seas around the British coast (pick-up 3) and paddles hard.  He's had favourable weather and not so favourable weather, and taken on some massive open water crossings to his home on the Isle of Man (40nm) and then on to the coast of Ireland.  Right now he's about to round Cape Wrath and turn East along the North coast of Scotland towards his theoretical half way point of John O'Groats.

Joe is updating his blog with progress reports and photos on an (almost) daily basis and tweeting from his kayak via his mobile phone which he's carrying in a waterproof case.  Follow how he's getting on here or find him on twitter @joearoundbritain.  

With camping spots like this Joe is fast collecting an amazing set of memories of places around the coast of our island that not many people will get to enjoy.

Joe is aiming to raise the modest sum of £1000 for Surfers Against Sewage.  You can donate here or through his website.  Not only is he taking on an unimaginable challenge for which donations will help to drive him on through the tough moments, but he's providing a service and personally removing around 240 pieces of litter from the sea.  Feel free to dig deep the best way you can, just as Joe's digging deep the best way he knows how.

View Joe Round Britain in a larger map

Flat Spell Blues

The North Atlantic has been asleep for the past few weeks and it's starting to show.  Friends are going fishing and jogging when normally they'd be sitting on a surfboard enjoying the long summer evenings, people are twitchy and tempers are getting short.  Meanwhile, my friends in South Africa have been enjoying a really good run of swell (some evidence here) as autumn starts to morph into winter so, here for all of the European surfers (and for anybody else for that matter who's not got in the sea for the past few weeks for anything more then a "scratching the itch" fitness paddle) are a few images of some Southern Hemisphere winter waves ripe for a bit of mind-surfing.  I hope that this doesn't compound the frustration but helps you through the lean times by facilitating a bit of down-the-line day dreaming.  There're waves on the way, wherever you are.

The first two guys tip toeing their way across the bricks to the keyhole, probably with their hearts beating a bit faster than normal for a number of reasons. 

What alarm clocks were invented for.

This chalkboard hangs on the wall of Ubuntu guest house in Jeffreys Bay and the last time I paid a visit I figured I'd take a shot for memory's sake.  Wise words, and advice well worth taking.