A cross section of St Andrews pier

Surf was up today at East Sands and everybody was in a wetsuit. The top of the beach was lined with surfer families: Mum, Dad and the two kids all with surfboards to match their size.

I often wonder, when I see such sporting families how much the children actually want to do it. In Italy I saw cyclist families huffing and panting up windy roads in their skin-tight jumpsuits. The adults were always miles ahead. Outside their natural habitat (i.e. in public) each family member looked just ridiculous the last. Sat outside a café, for instance, still wearing their impossibly impractical clip-on-the-pedal shoes forgetting that their thin, long bodies were still topped with helmets, their sun-blushed and annoyingly similar faces pulling at fresh orange juice through a straw.

I don't know why it irks me so much but it does.