Thrusters Diary

Like me, tens or even hundreds of thousands of surfers have started using Blu-Tack as a defence against the dreaded surfer’s ear. A sugar cube sized lump of the sticky blue magic seems to prevent water entering the ear canal much more effectively than any of the ear plugs on the market made specifically for the job AND, it’s much cheaper. 

However, this lack of expense may be the root of the problem. The value of the Blu-Tack we use in our ears every surf is only a couple of pence. Just like all other ear-plugs, this could be reused time and time again, but, as it doesn’t cost £20 a pair, we don’t look after it as carefully.

Thruster sticks his Blu Tak to his board

I usually stick mine on the rail of my board as soon as I get out of the water and then forget about it. The board then gets bunged into the back of the car and only when I pull it out again do I notice that the Blu-Tack has gone, usually having been dislodged by one of the headrests.

I frantically scour the car for it, only to finally find it coated in dog hair, sand and 3 year old pasty crumbs in the rear foot-well.

As tight as I am, even I am willing to break a fresh piece from the block, leaving the old piece either stuck to the dashboard, the steering wheel, or in the glove compartment.

The Blu Tak mountain in the living room encroaches

After just a few months, the car is smothered with 20 or 30 stray pieces of dirty Blu-Tack; a miniature environmental disaster! When you multiply 30 lumps of Blu-Tack by hundreds of thousands of surfers, that’s, um, a lot of Blu-Tack.

Surely this could be pooled, either by individuals or by nations for the greater good (e.g. for use in inner city primary schools).

Come on Mr Brown; make a plan! It’s not as if it can’t be done or hasn’t been done before.

The Morph Effect

For those of us old enough to remember, Children’s BBC presenter Tony Hart was both an innovator and a keen surfer. With his past-its-best ear putty, he formed a character called Morph who became loved by children across the globe. Look up “Morph” on Google image search, and you can clearly still see little specs of sand, Tony’s chest hair and the occasional roasted peanut mixed into his anatomy.

On a national scale, let’s take our lead from the Australians. They’ve obviously been surfing a lot longer than us, tens of millions of years in fact, so should have a significantly greater stockpile but, take a look just a few kilometres in from the coast between Sydney and Melbourne and what have you got – The Blue Mountains. The forward thinking Ozzies have actually formed a ski resort out of theirs.

Obviously, prevention is better than a cure, but if we use our resources frugally, and pool our wastage, surely we can come up with a project that’ll stop us singing the "Blus".

Thruster