Surfing? It’s as Cornish as piracy and pasties. As a thrilling exhibition opens in ‘Britain’s California’, we enter a heady world of coffinboards, hotdogging Aussies – and bans dished out to gangs fighting on the beach‘I had no friends,” says Charlotte Banfield, “and no interests. I was very depressed. It was all going to end very badly indeed for me.” Banfield – who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism, and was being bullied at school – thought of taking her life. But then, aged 13, she was enrolled by her mum in a six-week surfing course run by the Wave Project, which helps to improve children’s confidence and ease their anxiety through riding breakers. It was a pivotal moment, not least because Banfield was about to be excluded from school.Her first surf class was a disaster, though. “I had a phobia of water. I couldn’t stand it on my skin. I ran away and locked myself in the car.” But something – perhaps the sense that there was “no pressure” – brought her back. “When I went ...