PHOTO CRED: LUISA DELFI - WWW.LUISADEFI.COM, @LUISADELFI_UK
18 Scene
) For 26 years Andi Derrick worked in the film
industry as an Emmy award-winning foley artist (creating sound for film and TV). From the Harry Potter and Bond movies to The Crown and Peaky Blinders, Andi has created countless sounds for countless movies. Today, Andi couldn’t be further from the insular world of making sound magic in dark studios – she is now a Stand-Up Paddleboard (SUP) instructor, running her own business, Glo Wellbeing, from Goring beach, at the Sea Lane café near Worthing. It’s a massive life change – and was brought on by an apocalyptic event. Eight years ago, after three misdiagnoses, Andi was told she had stage three endometrial cancer. Two weeks later, the diagnosis was of stage four. “I was told I was having palliative chemotherapy and there was nothing the doctors could do for me.” So she started looking into alternative treatments that might help, from Chinese herbs to Jin Shin Jyutsu (an ancient Japanese healing art), and all things spiritual. She also found herself going back to the water again and again. “As a foley artist I was in studios for 26 years – dark, dusty, dirty, brilliant places for creativity, but not really good for my health. “After the first lot of chemo I went to a Greek island and I started to feel much better. I was in the sea all the time and I’d really missed it. The second time I went, in 2015, there was a great woman called Catherine who had a paddleboard, something I’d never seen before. She said, ‘jump on girl, off you go’. So I got on and off I went. I paddled for an hour and when I came back, I went: ‘Oh my god, I need more, that’s changed my life.”
STANDING UP TO THE ODDS
Andi Derrick tells Jaq Bayles how a life-changing experience transformed her approach
Returning home, Andi treated herself to a Red brand 10ft 6in paddleboard and took to the water as often as she could, meeting fellow paddleboarders, among them Mark Beadle, who would become her business partner. “I was getting myself back to a really good place, feeling stronger than I had for years. I found myself thinking about my future again, that maybe I’ve got a life to live after all.” PHOTO CRED: LUISA DELFI - WWW.LUISADEFI.COM, @LUISADELFI_UK
