Twenty minutes with Sian Pascoe (the voice telling you “again”)

If you've learned to surf with us in the last decade, you know the voice. It carries over a stiff onshore, it never sounds annoyed, and it says the same word every time you climb back on the board: again.

Sian Pascoe has been coaching at the club since before half our current members owned a wetsuit. We caught her between a Saturday beginner session and the kettle.

How many people do you reckon you've stood up over the years?

"No idea, and I'd never count. But there's a particular face people make the first time they ride one all the way to the sand — a sort of astonished outrage that nobody told them it felt like this. I've seen that face a lot. It doesn't get old."

What do beginners get wrong most often?

"They think the goal is standing up. The goal is falling off a thousand times and not minding. The standing up sorts itself out once you stop keeping score. Also — and I say this with love — everyone paddles for the wrong wave for about two years."

And what does the club get right?

"We put a coach in the water, not just on the beach. And nobody here pretends they were born doing this. Every single one of us served the apprenticeship: the nosedives, the board on the head, the wetsuit on backwards. When a beginner is having a shocker, there are forty people on that beach who genuinely remember what it felt like."

Best moment of the last year?

"The beginners' division at the Cove Classic. Watching people who couldn't paddle in March catch three waves in a heat in September, with the whole beach shouting for them. I had something in my eye, allegedly."

You'll find Sian at the Saturday sessions, most Tuesday evenings, and — if the hoodie stock is anything to go by — near the bakery. Say hello. Then do it again.