The best thing about a job that doesn’t keep traditional office hours is that I can sneak off with Bobby on a Tuesday morning to the skatepark. It’s usually quiet and empty: a perfect place for two dads who took up skateboarding in their 40s to feel alive (and also, to try to stay alive).
I began skating a few years ago when my friends, fellow Bristol-based writers Bobby Etherington and Emylia Hall, insisted I try Emylia’s surf skate_,_ a skateboard with a concave deck built to emulate surfing waves. It was tricky and I was wobbly but the second I got the groove of it, and I cruised along the path, I felt alive. To skate is to not be in your head, but be in your body instead, giving yourself over to your instincts.