Bubble of Stoke

Throughout the day, the infamous summer trade wind grew in velocity and venom. Shaggy clouds poured menacingly over the craggy peaks of the Twelve Apostles.

By 6pm, a neargale wind whipped down the slopes to hammer the sea at Camps Bay mercilessly, sending white-wisped spray scudding towards Brazil, and the first wavelets of a windswell running away from land, fleeing the angry air in terror.

But down on the beach, huddled in front of a big screen lashed to a concrete wall and pegged to the beach with two metal sand anchors that can withstand two tons of strain apiece, the surf energy exuding from the tight-knit crowd began to build momentum to slowly wrest the power from the evil wind.

By the time the last film began, the screen no longer billowed like a maniacal spinnaker on the Black Pearl manned by kelp-swathed zombies. Scything sand blasts no longer sluiced viciously across the audience like a sandstorm in Lawrence of Arabia.  

The swirling gusts began to bounce off the human-generated bubble. And as the action on screen progressed, so the stoke bubble grew in size and density.  

Momentum kicked softly at first with the lyrical strains of Dark Side of the Lens and pulsed at the energetic beat of Johnny Neon the beach dog. The power grid grew steadily through the thumping mayhem of Teahupo'o in Code Red only to reach peak output during the lilting mastery of Taylor Steele's Here and Now.

By the time Here and Now was hitting its straps, the bubble of stoke repelled everything the wind could throw at it. The wind simply bounced off a stoke-charged force field.

Ghostly shapes danced on the empty sand as a light-filled disc floated through the darkness.

Deep within the mystic confines of that serene space, the gusts were gone, and the sandy swirls gradually died down. By 9.30pm, it was positively barmy. The wind was powerless to penetrate the humming barrier of electric fire interwoven with waves of light shimmering from the screen. The wind disintegrated as waves of thumping sound thrummed in a myriad band of colour and light.

Burn, burn, burn another one. Down to the ground.

Later that night, after a few Great White Weiss beers at the Lifesavers Shack, ghostly shapes danced on the empty sand as a light-filled disc floated through the darkess.

Frisbee aliens were landing in the dark, their glowing saucers creating little puffs of silverly sand. By the moonlight, the serious moonlight.

And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race.