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Introduction:
My name’s Jamie Blair, I’m 39 years old, I come from
Glasgow, I started skateboarding in 1976, I’m still rolling
around now and again but I mostly surf these days. I own a surf,
skate and snowboard shop in Glasgow.
Did surfing follow on from skating as a natural
progression?
Yeah, I actually started skating because I always wanted to be a
surfer, but when you’re 10 or 12 years old and you live in
Glasgow, there’s not much chance of that, so when skateboarding
came along I just jumped on it. And then when I was about 19, I
managed to sell my motorbike and buy a surf board and start surfing.
So if you had no mode of transport when you started out, how
did you get to surf spots?
You have to live by the sea basically. It was virtually impossible
but I was a student and I phoned around and I got a phone number
of a guy that lived in Kirkontilloch who had a car and he was into
surfing and so it was kind of like friendship basically. So we’d
meet up and go surfing and I went surfing ever weekend for pretty
much a year and a half after that.
How long have you snowboarded?
I started snowboarding properly in about 1989-1990. Again, it was
just an off-shoot from skateboarding. I actually pretty much hated
it the first time I tried it, but then I was on a really crappy
board at the time, so good equipment always helps.
Do you enjoy it now then as much as surfing?
Nah, I enjoy surfing more. Snowboarding’s great, it’s
good fun and it’s amazing to be up in the mountains sometimes
in perfect conditions, but I don’t think that it matches up
to a good day of surfing.
How long do you think it took you before you
thought of yourself as a ‘good’ surfer?
It takes a shocking amount of time really. It takes years. Probably
three years before I could class myself as semi-competent, five
years before I thought I was even reasonable and I’ve been
doing it for nearly 19-20 years now and it’s still a struggle.
It’s always a struggle, surfing’s really really hard.
Who do you look up to and respect in the surfing world?
I always respect a lot of pro surfers for their ability, for their
shear ridiculous talent. It’s not even possible what they do
on surfboards. But I’m always interested when I meet older
surfers, ‘cos I find them inspirational. If I meet someone
who’s 55 or 60 years old and they’re still surfing, then
it gives me hope because it means that I can easily do that when
I’m their age.
Do you tend to really go for things, or do you
take things step by step?
I’m fairly obsessive about things. I’m definitely obsessive
about surfing. If I’m going to do it, I’ll do it all the
time, as much as I possibly can. But at the same time, you have
to be slightly reserved about things, because there’re other
things that you have to do with your life - you have to get a business
or an income together in order to do things that you really love.
So some people may call me in that fashion - I will always do something
other than something I love.
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