A small dark shape at first, a man kneeling at the water's edge, staring at nothing in particular, but attending to his board.

Bude, Cornwall, that flat grey light where the sea and the sky forget where one ends and the other starts.

From a distance, I thought he looked tired. Undecided, maybe. But I walked closer and saw that he was methodically rubbing his board again and again, in a trance.

I couldn't get his eyes in the frame; the camera missed that part entirely, but I didn't need to see them to know. It wasn't tiredness. It was something deeper. Thoughtful. Important. Preparing.

That's the strange privilege of a camera, sometimes. It puts you right next to someone else's subconscious for exactly as long as the shutter's open.

The surfer will never read this, and will never know I was there. But for a few seconds, I caught him readying himself for his next challenge.

That day I met a stranger on the beach waxing lyrical.