"Man, yeah, ya shoulda seen me when I was in my prime."

The old dog. He was telling stories again, the two young men sharing his table at the bar, looking wide-eyed at this matt-haired salt-soaked old man, skin weathered as driftwood, dark and leathery. He looked the part, and he sounded it.

He sat and sold stories for drinks, and business was good at this time of year. The sun shone year-round here, but at this time of day, at this time of year it was ferocious. I stood behind the bar under an electric fan and soaked in old Ron's tales. I'd heard them before, but the enthusiasm in him meant they didn't get old.

"Yeah," said Ron slowly, his eyes narrowed, "it's the freedom of it I miss. Before my knees went, if ever there was trouble in my life, trouble with the old lady or the job or any o' that stuff, I'd just grab my board and away I'd go, get lost for a day or two up the coast. I used to stalk waves like they do game in the woods, spottin' the signs of them in the sky and the wind and chasin' them up the coast. Thirty, forty-footers, more."

"Friend o' mine, Jimmy, had a helicopter. Bunch of us used to stop the waves swelling inland, an' have it down so we'd hop in the chopper an' get him to drop us out there in the ocean. He'd plop us down down out there where the waves are born, just raw power, before the shore forms 'em an' funnels 'em, an' there's no safety net out there. You fuck up, you die, an' you gone - foom, off in an undertow to the fishies. Not a bit o' you ever to be seen again."

Ron looked in a practised, puzzled manner at the bottom of his glass, perplexed to see it so soon. With a rushed apology, one of the youngsters hopped up and got me to fix him another.

I pulled a draught lager with similarly practised insouciance.

"You dig old Ron?" I asked.

The kid nodded. "Yeah, he's a blast."

I leant back, crossed my arms and furrowed my brow. "What if I was to tell you that he had never so much as stood upright on a board?"

The kid was puzzled. "Huh?"

"What if I told you that he can't swim, he hates water, he's shit-scared of sharks, and he just tells these stories to you rubes because he's an old souse and he hasn't got a bean?"

The kid shook his head with a disbelieving smile. "Nah man, that ain''t it. That guy's got it in his blood. You cut him, he bleeds saltwater."

I nodded. "Probably right."

I finished pouring the beer, shut off the tap and pushed it across the bar. The kid took it up and placed it reverentially before Ron. I leant back under the fan, and let Ron's tales wash over me like the warm fizzing spray he conjured with his words.