I like sandboarding – it’s an opportunity to completely wear yourself out climbing up sand dunes for an entire morning in a foam filled helmet and boots that were designed by arctic explorers. Then, each time you reach the top, you stand on a snowboard, and try your damndest not to look like a twat on your way to the bottom. Of course if you’re on a date, it’s doubly important that you not look like a twat, at any point. It’s unfortunate that I excel in this department.

So, we get to the top of the dune, and marvel at the extraordinary scenery. I, being in the beginners category (despite this being my third attempt at this), am shunted off to learn the basic principles of boarding. Gordon, being in the ‘yes, I snowboard all the time, and I like to go really, really fast’ category, is taken off for a brief lesson in Why Sand is Not Snow, before being allowed to scoot off jumps and whizz to the bottom of the hill like a pro.

This he duly does. I’m party to admiring murmurs from the assembled audience along the lines of “My god, you’d think he’d been sandboarding his whole life”. I try, and fail, not to look smug by association.

I, on the other hand, get on the board, and inch my way down the hill, falling on my face with my arse in the air at regular intervals, and being shouted at about the angle of my toes. At one point I fall over and am unable to get up. After flopping around on the dune like a beached sardine for approximately six lifetimes, I concede defeat. My cries of “Er. I’m a bit stuck. Can’t get up! Help!” drift pathetically up the dune. It is excrutiatingly humiliating.

The day continues in this vein.

I thank god that there is beer at the end of it.

Sexy, no?