For the surfer this is a big-spend time. The waters are unforgiving, the winds are relentless and with ambient temperatures making the roadside strip even less glamorous than we’re used to, we start to look at ways of surviving. Fortunately there are companies are out there ready and willing to provide the answers – for a price.

Ripcurl offer the thermo heat pad suit, which sounds like they’ve sewn an electric blanket inside. Tiki offer something similar, as do other brands, but they’re way out of my financial reach so I’ve spent the last couple of days considering cheaper, homespun solutions…

The hottie bottie: a simple idea, involving the insertion of a hot-water bottle between you and the wetsuit. Works well enough for about 10 minutes, but eventually feels like you’re carrying a sloppy corpse on your chest.

Placky bag sealed heat pads: similar to the above involving bag-wrapped microwaved beanbags which, when correctly placed, have the added benefit of making you look like a well-endowed girl. Can you safely run a microwave from a car’s cigarette lighter? More research required…

Tandem wetsuiting: sharing body heat is a simple solution to surviving winter weather. Find a friend – ideally a very slim one with few inhibitions and a penchant for rubber-based thrills – and join them in a single suit. This is a great idea but, be warned, it helps to dress back-to-back if either of both of you want to breathe.

Seal suiting: if anyone knows how to stay warm in a cold sea it’s a seal, so grab one and stuff it down your neck – if anyone manages this please let me know!

Alcohol: ah, the simplest ideas are the best. Ignore all the messages about alcohol being bad for you, just neck a bottle of fiery ginger wine and off you go. You’ll be just as cold but I doubt you’ll care.

Okay, so some of these solutions might need further testing before they rival Tiki et al but we’ve got to be brave. For the moment I’ll just have to rely on the old and trusted methods: plenty of Ralgex and a decent piss once I hit the water.

I spotted my wave, took a few practice strokes to move into its path then gunned it. The monster (all two foot of it) rose beneath me and I suddenly knew, really knew, why surfing had such a hold on people. I pressed down, popped up, wobbled, grabbed the inside rail for balance, rose a little then suddenly everything went silent. The wave had unexpectedly peaked (an almighty four-foot face from nowhere) and I was in its jaws. I knew what was going to happen but was powerless to prepare. I tried to suck in a lungful of air but only managed a shallow, salty gasp before the water crashed down on top of me. Now I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the North East waters around Scarborough, but they could never be described as clear. Even on a good day the best you might award them is ‘silty’, but this was an early autumn swell and there was as much chance of light penetrating those waters as I had of penetrating…(insert your own inappropriate ending here). I was lost in the blackness. There was no up, no down, just a mass of muffled roars and the cold. My instincts told me to swim but the wave had disorientated me. I knew I would float eventually, I knew up would find me, but somehow the cold darkness had got in through my wetsuit and all I could feel, all I could understand was the inevitability of a forever of blackness. I’ve been scared of wipe-outs ever since, but that’s recently changed.

I’m quite prone to bouts of depression. I have a bi-polar personality with an unhealthy slice of narcissism to boot and this means I regularly spend time struggling with, what Winston Churchill called his ‘black dog’. I have tried medication – my doctor and I have done the whole journey from tricyclic antidepressents to serotonin- norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors and, for the most part, they’ve worked. However, I’m not the greatest fan of using chemicals to solve my problems – having quit drinking a couple of years ago it would seem impolite to trust one drug but not the other. I attend regular therapy with a lovely woman who never seems to mind me repeating myself, I go to the gym, eat well, try to get plenty of sleep and surround myself with positive, well-balanced people. Even so, when the inevitable trough appears, there’s little I can do about it. It is like being held down, in the cold, dark of the North Sea, with barely enough air and no sense of up or down.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been struggling down there, surrounded by the blackness, losing hope of floating back to the surface, getting colder and colder. So pervasive has it been, that the very idea of going out on a board has seemed an impossibility. I’ve not logged on to Magicseaweed in more than a month. My wetsuit couldn’t be drier and my car is beginning to smell less like a rubber fetishist’s party bathroom and more like… a car. I had lost all sense of perspective. Then I got a call.

Swell was up and rising, lines were coming in clean and the tide was set to turn in the middle of the day. In short, it wouldn’t get better, not for ages. Ordinarily my wife is a reluctant surf widow, but this time she was excited. No sooner had I told her about the session than she was replanning her day around it. The car became available, my suit, gloves and boots were found and packed – she even helped me strap Big Steve onto the roof before handing me some change for parking and waving me off. I was pulling into the Cayton car park before I realised what was happening.

There were a few regulars in attendance, another dozen already in the water. I met up with my friend and went to check out the lines: smooth, well spaced and growing. We picked our spot, braved the biting wind and got ready. Sealed in our slug suits, we skidded and slipped down to the beach, waded in at Point and were soon paddling towards the rip which would send us out to the line-up. My arms complained, my lungs burned and my genitals retreated into the comparable comfort of my stomach.

Wave followed wave followed wave. I bobbed up and down, letting myself harmonise with the gentle rhythm. My friend caught one, then another and another. Finally he paddled back to where I was floating. “Your wave,” he said. I saw the hillock of water approaching and paddled into the line of fire. I could feel the wash sucking up beneath me. I dug in, acting on muscle memory and instinct more than conscious design, and found the take off. I pressed down, popped up and, unsteady as ever, grabbed the rail for balance. The face rose up behind me: a grey wall of unrelenting, unrepentant power. It peaked, it toppled, it collapsed. The board was suddenly gone from beneath my feet. The world was silent and cold and black. There was a rush of noise as I felt myself being sucked into the vortex and dumped into the breaking wave. Down was up, up was down and everything was cold and dark and empty. I had not a breath in me but I didn’t struggle, I didn’t panic, I relaxed, let the water bounce me round like a lost shoe until I came to rest beyond the impact zone. I stayed down longer than I needed to. Either the lack of oxygen or the combined forces of adrenalin and 60mg of Citalopram made me calm. The world slowed down to a manageable pace and all I had to do was wait.

I surfaced near Bunkers – a few hundred yards north from where I’d started. I gulped in air, pulled on my leash to retrieve my board and climbed on. My face was tight: something was pulling on it, stretching it into an unusual formation of muscle and mouth and teeth. I hadn’t smiled like that in six weeks. It felt good. It felt amazing.

It’s been a week since that wipe out. I’ve not been in again – heavy seas and cross winds have made the bays too dangerous for me – but I can still feel that smile on my face. It has warmed me when the drugs lose their potency. It has cheered me when my therapist hits upon a particularly fragile psychological seam. It has spurred me on to run harder, lift heavier and sleep deeper. In short it has made it possible for me to start resurfacing. And that’s what I am thankful for: the lessons each and every slam and wipe-out teach us. You can’t avoid the trough, there’s nothing you can do to avoid the sudden peak or more sudden collapse of a wave, there are no guarantees, no promises and no rewards but if you don’t fight, don’t struggle, don’t stress about whether you’re swimming in the right direction, you’ll eventually pop up and see the light.

This was the north west coast of Spain. Basque country, mid August and I was basking in the new day, looking out along the coast at an Atlantic view so beautiful I felt too ugly to look at it. I was so immersed in the loveliness that I hardly noticed the young man come and sit down at the rock next to mine. I heard him light a cigarette and turned to offer him a smile, to share with him this moment of perfection. He looked back, shrugged his shoulders and said “yeah, downer right?”

It turned out his name was Marco and he’d travelled from his home in Italy to surf the waves from Biarritz to Bilbao. He’d blown over two thousand Euros on the trip so far, most of it on fuel, and had just enough to last the weekend before heading home. He was the picture of frustration. He’d managed just three sessions worthy of his expenditure but they had been a fortnight ago and in that time the nearest he’d come to satisfaction was a clumsy hook up with a girl from Belgium in the back of his van. He was young, good looking and tanned. He wore Reef baggies and leather thong sandals and his ripped abs and chiselled pecs made me wish I had brought a thicker sweater with me, and yet he was lost. He couldn’t enjoy the splendour of the sunrise, he couldn’t appreciate the panorama stretching out before us, he couldn’t begin to appreciate the wonder laid out all around on this most prefect morning. He was hopeless and I pitied him.

Later, having spent a happy morning floating on the sea, I came to the conclusion that Marco and others like him had been spoiled. They had spent so long imagining their trip that the reality couldn’t help but be a disappointment. Marco told me he’d researched every break from Poitiers to Porto before deciding on this stretch of the coast. He’d seen every video, clip and photograph of the waves which slam into the beaches of this area. He’d followed weather patterns, mapped out storms, become an expert on the oceanography of each break, each point, each river mouth but it had all come to nothing as the prevailing winds died and the ocean lay like a sleeping lion.

As for me, I’d stashed my board on the top of the car just in case. I’d ignored weather fronts and chosen my vacation destinations based on less capricious ideals: cultural events, food, bars, architecture – things I could count on. My board had come to every beach but had for the most part been our picnic table or float and I had never once begrudged the extra lugging because, as every Yorkshire East coast surfer knows, you ever can tell when a swell might appear.

Two days later Marco left for Italy. I spent the morning in the town and the afternoon waling along the coast road. In the evening we drove down to the beach and I lay out on the board to soak up the warm rays of the Sun as it slipped towards the horizon. I felt the win change and peeked up to see a bulge appear in the waters. It moved in slowly, rose up on the beach break and curled into a beautiful arc. Then, as the foam died down I saw another monster rising. I grabbed my board and headed in. Okay these weren’t the double overheads Marco had imagined, but they were clean and regular and so sweet you could have served them for dessert. So I, unspoiled by expectation or aspiration, surfed into the dusk while Marco drove home with noting but shattered dreams as his companions.

You know what its like: riding the perfect tube; the crystal waters scooping up to your trailing hand; the roar of a ton of water crashing behind you, spitting you out, through the foam to ride clean, arms aloft, embracing the sunshine as it embraces you. You know what that feels like, that elation, that sense of oneness? No? Me neither. Never. Not once. Not even close. The truth is, such a sublime experience is not granted to the many, it is the preserve of the few. Such an inspirational moment gathers its potency from its rarity. Which is all well and good but that’s no comfort to your average stick jockey, up to his ears in silty grey sludge as he fights his way through porridge-like swell having wiped out, yet again, after a twenty second scramble to stay upright. It’s no comfort to my North Sea addled heart to know that somewhere, out in the azure wilds of the Indian Ocean a select bunch of dudes and dudettes are living the dream, scoring tube after glorious tube in seas as warm as my bath water. No comfort at all. But before this descends into a bitter diatribe, let us consider what Taj Burrows and the rest of the ASP circus are missing out on. And they are missing out.

It’s a wet Thursday in the middle of November. I’m sitting in my car staring out at a great grey slab of sea slowly turning beige in the bleak sunless dawn. The windscreen wipers are squeaking as they wash away the driving rain. I’m still dressed, the wetsuit limp and lifeless in the boot, and outside, my friend Ben is unlashing the boards from the roof – his penance for snapping the fin on my favourite board. It’s too early, too grey and I’m bloody freezing.

I’ve watched three other regulars pull up, poke their heads out and pull off again without a second thought. I watched one local go in – a leathery faced whale of a man with a board the size of a bus – and ten minutes later come back with half his bus under his arm, the other half blowing like a kite, tugging at the leash still attached to his ankle. The omens do not bode well. Even Ben looks dubious, his normally bright expression almost blown away by the harsh easterly. He bangs on the window and shouts, “Come on then!” I take a deep breath, turn off the ignition and, as the heater slowly whines to a halt, yank open the door to make a start of it.

We are near naked faster than a pair of Chippendales working double time at a female prison. We work together. We zip each other up, sealing ourselves in the 6.4 neoprene. While Ben gloves up I lock the car and stuff the keys in the exhaust pipe. Ben passes me my board and we stare at each other, wordless, our mouths hidden beneath our hoods, blowing hot air into the rubber to help delay the inevitable ear ache. A nod and we’re off.

The wind blind-sides us as we emerge from the protection of the sea wall. We run to the water, dismissing the boiling mess of peaks and foam ahead. We know this break. We know where we’re going. We know how hard this is going to be. It’s not until we’re waist deep and our feet are being tugged away with the returning tide that we slip onto our boards and begin the paddle. Each pull hurts. Ducking the waves freezes our faces. Emerging into the offshore gale adds insult to injury. Still we paddle, trying to ignore the slow progress, waiting for the rip to catch us, pull us out beyond the impact zone. Just one more duck, I say to myself, one more dive, one more pull, one more slap in the face. My hands are numb, my lungs are burning and when we finally struggle over the last peak, sit up and face the shore, the enormity of this little swim overwhelms us. We slump over to catch our breath. The swell is poor, no more than junky waves which close out early or fair to rise. There’s a cross wind whipping against the prevailing gale, knocking the waves as they build. The sets are difficult to judge, there’s no clean line to follow but this might be the only swell I’ll catch all week so it has to be enough.

I take a couple of warm up waves, ducking off before the drop, getting a feel for them. Ben tries one, gets mashed up on a late drop. I sit on the line-up until he makes his way back. His eyes say it all. We sit in silence. Craning our necks to see wave after crappy wave dissolve into greasy foam. It feels like hours, like days. Then, just as we’re on the verge of giving up, I look at the horizon and see what might, just might, be a set rolling in; a brace of clean lines in the middle of all the confusion. I point them out to Ben. They’re nothing, waist high at best, the sort of wave the circus boys wouldn’t get out of bed for but the best we can expect, possibly the best we’ll get all week. Beggars can’t be choosers. Ben’s still suffering from his wipe out so I get ready for the first of the waves.

They sweep in quicker than I anticipate, catching me almost off guard, I panic. I can’t waste what might be the only real wave of the session. Arms dead with the cold, I paddle like my life depends upon it. It might as well be Jaws rising up behind me, not some squalid little ripple off the east coast of Yorkshire. My heart is pounding. I feel the lift and dig deep, paddle with a vigour which betrays my desperation. Too desperate? Too needy? I haven’t time to worry, I’ve one chance. Three final pulls and it’s up. The wave’s peaking, threatening to close out. I cut back quickly, try to capitalise on the dying energy, terrified that there’s nothing left, that I’ll float right over into the chop and waste my chance. But suddenly the face rises, a new sand bar has pulled it up and I turn off the lip to see the water grow until it’s at my shoulder as I slice along its length. I forget the ache in my arm, I forget the rain, I forget the wind, I forget the freezing cold and for ten beautiful seconds I’m in my own world.

Ben catches his but it closes out before the bar. He rides the white water back to shore and I follow. It’s getting late. We trudge back to the car, lash the boards to the roof and set off home, still in our suits. We might be mad but we’re not idiots. Back home the house is waking. My wife comes down to find Ben and I sitting in silence, drinking coffee, wetsuits in the sink, our clothes crumpled and sticky over our reddening skin. “Was it good?” she asks.

And this is what they’re missing, Taj and his fellow pros, this purity, this simplicity. The feeling of having made something of nothing, finding perfection in the worst of situations. They miss out on the elation of finding one wave worth riding because for them there will always be another wave on its way, another perfect tube, another massive break whereas for us this might be it. This might be the best of the season and it’s still worth it. Worth the pain, worth the struggle, worth every dawn patrol disappointment because, right at this moment, I’m king of the world. “Yeah,” I tell my wife, “It was the best.”