Hairy land sharks

Unlike my good mate Paulie I have never been a surfer, I was a swimmer for a while but lack of vision without glasses meant going out beyond the break also meant going out of sight of land, in fact it meant going out of sight of everything apart from a two meter bubble of water and sky around me.

Then jaws happened and I got my first proper phobia! Forget the dark and the rabbits, this was real, they bitey bastards could be zooming around, just below your feet and bollocks and in the murkiness of the rivers and oceans around the uk you where never gonna know until a big bit of you was missing.

And don’t try to tell me they don’t go into rivers, I call bullshit, they go where the food is and I reckon, if the mosquitoes are anything to go by then nature loves me, I am especially tasty.

I know I am safe on land, and in the green and pleasant lands of England, where we have long since exterminated anything capable of creating mayhem on the human body, apart from the beast of Bodmin and rabbits, obviously, I feel safe in my little tent.

However Alaska is a very different matter.

As everyone knows tents are like duvets, impregnable armour against the dark and the ghouls that roam it, but I have seen the revenant and I don’t think my mouse eaten envelope of nylon is going to be proof against one of they big hairy buggers.

So I am developing a shiny new phobia of bears, or hairy land sharks as they shall now be known?

Then there is this…..

Thank god for Triumph triples, hopefully capably of outrunning a hungry hairy land shark.