The day I learned how to fall off my surfboard

Herald reporter Claire Trevett is watched by French surf-coach Pierre Baliros as she wipes out again at Mt Maunganui. Picture / Alan Gibson

If anyone was wondering where all the water in the Bay of Plenty has gone, I can tell you.

This week was my first surfing lesson; the water is all up my nose.

I'm under the tutorage of Mike Clamp, who comes over from his French base in Biarritz every year with a qualified French instructor, to "eat pies and fish and chips" for two months and run his Mt Maunganui Surf School.

Clamp was an All Black winger back in the 80s until he got "booted out" after the Cavaliers 1986 tour to South Africa. Since then he has lived in France, where he played professional rugby, set up the Quiksilver surfing brand, established his own surf school and married (not in that order).

Pierre Baliros demonstrates surfing on the sand of the beach. Numerous people are watching, attracted by the Cirque du Soleil warm-up consisting of belly-dancing and knee twisting.

He lies on his front, hands flat under his shoulders, and then "poosh", he does what looks like an extreme push-up and up he springs, from flat out to standing in one little hop.

We follow suit.

The little hop takes me numerous grunts and shufflings with feet and knees. I fall off the board on dry land.

Things do not get any better once in the water.

Surfboards do not have emotions. Even though it dumps me a dozen before I've even stood up, apparently the board is not out to get me.

Nothing is ever the fault of the board. Pierre has the ludicrous notion that it is somehow a fault on my part.

Pierre is easy on the eye, has a slayer smile and it is somehow nice being told you are rubbish in a thick French accent.

He has worked under an ex-All Black, so excuses are not high on his tolerance list, no matter how inventive they may be.

My failings are not because the board is slippery, anymore than the reason I cannot stand up on waterskis is because my hands are too small to hold the bar.

I have never been renowned for patience in learning new tricks. The creed "if at first you don't succeed, try again" was left out of my genetic makeup. I much prefer "if at first you don't succeed, give up and go find something you can kick butt at instead". Hence short-lived childhood careers in ballet (two weeks) and trombone (three lessons after which I still could not get a sound out and my teacher told me my stomach wobbled when I laughed).

Clamp says in Australia they teach surfing by getting the victim to kneel and then stand. It's underarm surfing. In France, this is a big no-no, because it teaches you bad habits.

"It's cheating. It's not real surfing. That's just looking for quick results."

Any results sound good to me, so when Pierre is distracted, I opt for surfing the Aussie way. This is largely because I cannot get any higher than my knees anyway, except for the time Pierre got me to stand on it clutching his shoulder. He then pushed me when the wave came, at which point I had to let go and promptly fell off.

I get quite good on my knees. Pierre is not so pleased with my progress.

"Thees ees not a body boarding leesson." Next to me, my previously good friend Kristin stood up on her first wave.

"Eet ees easy," Pierre says. "Just stand oop. Kreesteen can do eet."

Pierre has made the foolish mistake of telling me his ear canals are up the wop. If he gets water in them he sometimes cannot hear for three days. After he tells for the ninth time "eet ees all een your mind" I aim a judicious kick of water in the general direction of his ears and feel better.

When I get tired and try to slink off up the beach, I find out the photographer has been so busy laughing he hasn't been able to take any photos.

"Get back in," he yells. "I haven't got any good ones of you falling off."

I say it is difficult to fall off something you can't get onto in the first place. Sympathy is thin on the ground.

"Pathetic," is his verdict on my lesson. "At first it was quite amusing. Then it was just tragic."

We trudge back up to the beach to Clamp. "You look like you've been in World War II," he says.

I ask if we can borrow a board later on to practise. I tell him I want to stand up before I leave the Mount.

"How long are you here for?" he asks. "A year?"