Time for a Break

I'm not going to be updating this blog on a weekly basis after this week. Which is not to say that I won't ever update it again, but I really need to be doing more cycling and diving to make it worthwhile. So, see you here in future again I hope, but only once I have more stories to tell!

Back in the Sea

I managed my first sea dive of the year yesterday. I say "dive"; we managed about 3.5m of depth, and the viz was as shown in the photo!

Still, 'tis good to have some saltwater on my gear. Also, we were at St Mary's Island, and whilst the seals didn't get too close, they did pop their heads up to see who the strangers were. All in all, it was way more fun than being at work.

Got My Pills

Things are better since my last post. I have successfully obtained my pills, meaning that the floor is now where I expect it to be. Losing your sense of balance is a side-direction of sudden SSRI-drug withdrawal. It is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

Happily, my prescription was where I expected it to be, at the chemist's. In the past, neither the chemist nor the doctor has known who is supposed to have it, so I traipse backwards and forwards (unsteadily) until I find it, or have an argument with the receptionist. It's always fun trying to convince someone you are not selling your pills on the black market or OD-ing on them, when "GIVE ME MY ****ING DRUGS!" is written all over your wavering face.

Anyway, the magic happy pills are back in the medicine chest, I'm back in the sea, and all is well with the world.

This Week, Then

So, on the negative side, I pulled press desk duty the day after three violent incidents happened on the same day. I had to deal with two sets of unexpected cock-ups with three big projects, and I failed to pick up my prescription for the happy pills. Joy of joys, the prescription is now sitting inside a pharmacy that is closed until Monday and I ran out on Wednesday, meaning that I'm spending the weekend chemically impaired and not reliably able to judge where the floor is. (Yes, misfortunes caused my your own incompetence are the worst.)

On the plus side, I finally managed to do this....

... so at least I have a free cappuchino to console my woes.

I am not entirely sure that the universe is playing fair.

The Terror of Space

I was reading this article on people signing up for the Mars One expedition; a one-way trip to Mars. I cannot imagine anything much more terrifying.

The article describes the selection process for people wanting to take part. I do wonder if any part of it (yeah, you know this is coming) involved asking "Have you done any scuba diving?"

I don't often talk about the scary aspect of diving. Most other divers don't. We know it is there, and if it bothered us, we wouldn't do it. Talking about to non-divers gives the wrong impression, and can put people off. And by "wrong impression", I don't mean I'm pretending something dangerous is safe. Scuba diving is in a similar risk category to jumping into half a ton of metal and barrelling down a narrow asphalt strip at 70mph. Actually, if you check out this infographic (worth it just for the hilarious illustrations), it may well be safer than being in a car. 

The scary aspect of diving is one that it took me a while to grasp. Possibly all those people who reacted to my tales of diving with "Ohmigod, I could NEVER do that" grasped it faster than I did. From my point of view, I know where I'm going, I assess if it's safe and if my buddy and I can get to where we want to go and back with the air supply we've got. And if we can do all those things, then off we swim, breathing happily through our regulators with 12m of water over our heads.

And all that is fine, up until the proverbial hits the fan, and you suddenly realise with absolute clarity that you are in an alien environment where, to quote one of my favourite blogs on diving, "A single breath of the ambient atmosphere can, kind reader, fucking kill you".

I have never had a catastrophic experience when diving, but I had one very nasty experience when I over-breathed my regulator about 25m down in the Farne Islands (meaning I was breathing very heavily and too fast, and the regulator was struggling to deliver gas at the rate I was demanding it - gas thickens slightly at depth, which is why all divers are advised to breathe deep and slow). I felt like I was suffocating. More scary than that, I could feel myself starting to panic. Panic is the number one killer of divers. There are few more potentially panic-inducing situations than being surrounded by water, with 25m of it above your head, and not being able to breathe the air that is the only thing keeping you alive.

Fortunately for me, my dive training took over. I realised what was happening, and took the appropriate action; ascending slowly until the pressure lowered slightly, my breathing rate dropped as the surface got slightly nearer, the regulator began delivering the gas more easily, and I calmed down and carried on with the dive. But for a few seconds, I suddenly understood why panicking divers rocket up to the surface and rip all their dive gear off their faces. If willpower alone could cause humans to teleport, I would have been out of the water and on the boat in two seconds.

The only thing that kept me calm was the knowledge that it was within my power to end this situation. I knew that if I really couldn't carry on the dive, I could end it, ascend slowly and be floating on the surface in a matter of minutes.

Note: this is not the ideal way to end a dive, as technically you should always pause for three minutes at 5m deep to help ensure that any excess gas is out of your system, but all recreational diving is planned in such a way that you don't HAVE to make the stop if things go completely wrong.

Technical divers do not have this safety margin. To dive deeper, they accept that they will give up the option of ending the dive at any point, and that if they have a problem, it must be resolved under the water. (This is why they dive with two sets of working scuba gear, plus quite often extra tanks of gas in case of emergency.) This is a big part of the reason I think I may never technical dive. I respect people who do it mightily, but I am terrified of the idea of having a panic attack under the water without the option of safely removing myself from the situation inducing the panic. (This is also why part of NASA's astronaut training involves scuba diving.)

Which brings me back to Mars One. Imagine this situation for a moment. You're locked in a room the size of your living room with, say, three other people. You want to go outside. You can't. You start having a panic attack and pass out. And when you wake up ... you still can't go outside. You will never, in your entire life, see a tree, or an animal, or the sea, or anything familiar, ever again. You are sealed in that can for eternity, and there will never be a way out. Even regular astronauts in the International Space Station have the knowledge at the back of their heads that at some point, they'll be going back home.

No human beings have ever subjected themselves to this. To my mind, it's not a description of a scientific expedition, it's the plot of a horror movie. To quote another blog on this subject:

Over the decades, people in the colony will die and there is no guarantee that more people will come to replace them. In time, there will be only one person left on the entire planet. If that person is you, it will be very lonely indeed. You could be alone for ten or twenty years and possibly longer. It will just be you, marooned on an inhospitable rock out in the solar system, alone. That is truly the stuff of nightmares.

Ever since that incident in the Farne Islands, space movies scare me. I love them and still watch them, but when Sandra Bullock was floating around running out of oxygen, I was there. Space is unimaginably vast, inhospitable and empty.

And yet, funnily enough, I still do hope that at some point, my species will leave our home and travel somewhere else. Just because... well, I was brought up with Star Trek. Real space is much bigger and emptier than Gene Roddenberry made it seem, but it would truly be a remarkable thing if we could somehow find a way to travel outwards and establish ourselves on another world.

Just... not yet. And in a ship much bigger than a living room.

My Life Depends on Tiny Bits of Rubber

A picture of my regular, a Scubapro MK2

So, I went on an Equipment Servicing course yesterday at the dive shop. As is the way of these things, it was held on one of the most sunny days of the year, but we couldn't have known that when we booked it!

Actually, it was worth giving up four hours in the sun for. I spend a lot of time with my dive gear, and it's good to know how it works. Also, taking things to bits is fun, although slightly alarming. The tiny bits of rubber in question are two pieces of rubber, each half the size of a penny, which sit inside the regulator (the thing you breathe through) and form part of the valves within it. In other words, they ensure that the air comes through only when you want it to, and not when you don't.

Some people on the course found this a bit alarming, although this may have been induced by the fact we'd all been sniffing glue. (The sort kept in the workshop to stick ripped-up wetsuits back together - it's not a very big workshop.) I can relate (to the alarm, not the glue sniffing - my poison of choice is ethanol). At 35m deep, sometimes, it's better to think along the lines of "It works by magic, la la la, DIVE FAIRIES", than to know exactly how tiny and delicate the mechanism currently keeping you alive is. On the other hand, my gear is serviced by the same chap who ran the course, and he has clearly forgotten more about how dive gear works that I will ever know.

So, I can now take my scuba mask apart and wash it, which has hopefully got the mould off it. Tonight, I shall learn if I can put it back together again. 

Narked by Cold?

My buddy, finding Thunderbird Four 

Well my last dive was ...interesting. In the sense that the final part of it involved me learning first-hand that my ability to safely do a free ascent from a depth greater than 10m in my drysuit is something that needs work. Also, that I will never again forget to clip my SMB (Surface Marker Buoy) to my jacket - lesson learned. It would have been very helpful to have the cord as a visual reference point when trying to ascend. On the other hand, I was having enough to deal with the incessant "YOU ARE GOING UP TOO FAST STOP THAT NOW OR YOU WILL DAMAGE YOUR LUNGS YOU FLAMING IDIOT" beeps from the computer, the fact that I couldn't seem to balance the weight in my jacket and the air in my suit to be neither sinking nor rising, and the fact that my mask chose this moment to fill with water.

I distinctly remember having a second or so's brain space to think "Hmm. This isn't working out how I planned" in the middle of the "Well, shit, what now?" situation.

I solved the problem by dropping down a bit, stabilising, then ascending and swimming across to a nearby rock ledge at 6m, when I floated around doing a safety stop, clearing my mask and thinking baleful thoughts at my computer. And at my own stupidity. Luckily my buddy was fine, although he had his hands full shepherding some very new divers back to the exit point.

The second dive went much better, as myself and my buddy retraced our steps, and I practised a safe ascent, which went better. The only odd thing about that dive was that towards the end, my buddy signalled "I am cold, let's turn around" (he wears a wetsuit). We immediately turned round, but he suddenly paused, and picked up an object (I think a discarded metal ring from someone's dive kit) from the quarry floor. He then swam around for a while, looking for something, then carefully placed the object on the rock and swam off.

This is unusual behaviour, as most divers who have signalled "Cold" will start kicking with some speed once the end of the dive (and a nice cup of tea) is in site. I asked him about it later, and he commented "It just seemed really important to do that". We both pondered this, as this sort of fixation with completing a specific task, without thinking about the dive plan, is characteristic of nitrogen narcosis. However, we were only about 8m deep at the time, which is way too shallow for narcosis to kick in.

Was it exertion and cold causing a slight form of narcosis, or was it slight hypothermia? No way of knowing, but an issue to be aware of; that would be more of a problem if we were in the North Sea needing to get back to the ascent point, and then climb back into a boat.

Other than that, though, it was an interesting dive. And we found Thunderbird Four.

Ever Feel Like You Don't Know Your Own Country?

I have little else to say on the election result at this moment. Other than some quiet sobbing and unnecessary drinking.

On the plus side, Eric Pickles is no longer the minister against local government. But when you quit looking on the bright side of the catastrophe, the catastrophe is still there.

The Beadnell Car Park Song

I'd like to fill this space with a tale of diving derring-do. Unfortunately, the last time I went diving I nearly gave myself the bends. That tale can wait a bit longer.

Instead, here is a musical interlude, to be sung to the tune of "Human" by the Killers, and invented by my good friend J.

Beadnell is, of course, the site of many a North Sea dive. The car park has seen more semi-naked divers than the site of a very bad (and specialist) soft porn shoot.

"I did my best to notice
If the buoy was on the line
Up to the surface of the water
I was cold but I was fine.

"Sometimes I get nervous
When I see the film "Jaws"
Close your eyes, clear your ears
Hold the cord.

"Are we stupid?
Or are we divers?

My hands are freezing
My head is cold.

"And I'm on my knees
Searching for an O-ring*
In a car park
Near Beadnell."


* Small rubber ring, used to create a leak-proof seal between the valve on top of the tank, and the first stage of the regulator used to supply the breathing gas to the diver. Slightly smaller than a penny. Shares the common ability of all tiny mechanical objects essential to a complex process occuring, of flinging itself down the nearest drain at the least provocation. The likelihood of this occurring is expontentially increased if the diver in question doesn't have a spare.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 12: The Short Arm

This story dates from when I lived in a shared house in the west of Newcastle. One summer afternoon, we held a barbecue, and all the housemates invited their friends. One of my housemates' friends, who helped me do the salad, had a short arm, ending just after the elbow joint.

I thanked her for helping chop the veg, and she grinned and said: "Yes, but I have to be careful when I do that... I once nearly made someone faint in A&E."

"How did that happen?"

"You see this scar on my arm?"

She held up the end of her arm, which had a neat white line near the end.

"That looks nasty."

"Yeah...." 

The story was that she had been chopping peppers one evening whilst starting to cook dinner. Her method was to pin down the pepper with the end of her short arm, and hold the knife and chop with her hand. Unfortunately, one of her housemates came in the kitchen behind her and let the door slam. She jumped, the knife slipped, and she cut herself across the end of the arm.

The cut was in an awkward place and wouldn't stop bleeding, so in the end she bundled a tea towel around the end of her arm, and went to A&E for stitches. This was a weekend, so it was a busy night, and she was sat there for a while.

Next to her was a guy who was possibly the worse for wear. She noticed him staring at with a faint expression of horror.

"What happened?" he eventually asked, with a faint tone of dread.

"Oh, I cut myself with a big knife."

The drunk paled and started to look woozy. "Did you find it, like?"

My housemate's friend followed his gaze to the bloodstained tea towel at the end of her short arm, and suddenly realised what he was thinking.

"No, it's okay! My arm has always been this length!"

The Tales We Keep Telling, 11: The Old Dudes on the No. 62 Bus

I frequently catch the no. 62 bus home from the pub of an evening. The no. 62 winds its way along the Byker Bridge and Shields Road before striking out north to Heaton, and the clientele covers a wide range of folks. At that time of the evening, though, there's usually a few older Geordie chaps returning home from the pub.

One evening, I was sitting behind three of them on the top floor, as the bus rounded the corner from Shields Road up towards Chillingham Road, past what is now the Lord Clyde pub, and was then called Peggy Sue's. This was about 11pm, and there was what the police would probably call a "domestic disturbance" taking place outside the pub.

The old dudes and I stared out of the window and watched, much like the pub's bouncer. They umm'd and ahh'd.

Old Dude 1: "She's not going to go home with him."

Old Dude 2: "Nope."

Old Dude 1: "Now she's going to hit him over the head with her shoe."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 1: "That's what it's like round here on a Tuesday evening."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 3: (with tone of solemn contemplation): "When you two eat a boiled egg..."

::pause::

"...do you have it with salt?"

We've Found Lord Lucan (Not Really)

Yesterday I bunked off work to go diving. If there's one thing that makes a dive more enjoyable, it's being able to take advantage of the sunny weather to do it. Bonus points if everyone else is stuck in the office. (It makes up for all the times you have to haul yourself out of bed on a rainy Sunday morning, whilst everyone else has a lie-in.)

We headed down to Capernwray Quarry in Lancashire. The weather has not been conducive to good sea diving recently (too stirred up), but several days' sunshine suggested the visibility in the quarry would be good. I wanted to try out the new gear I've bought to help with my drysuit; new fins and undersuit. I also wanted to swim through a plane. Capernwray Quarry recently bought and sunk an entire Cessna aircraft for people to swim through when diving, and the photos are amazing.

Unfortunately, my photos weren't going to be, because I managed to forget to attach my white slate onto my diving jacket. I need this so that the camera can take a reading at depth and figure out what white looks like at the depth I'm diving at, so that it can adjust the colour balance and compensate for the lack of red light. Annoyingly, the silicon pouch I put in the camera also failed; it must have been too old to absorb all the moisture in the air inside the camera housing, which led to condensation in the housing, crap photos on the second dive, and me having to put the camera in the airing cupboard to dry out when I got it home. That said, I took the photo above, so it wasn't a dead loss.

I also got to practice diving with the drysuit, which is coming along nicely. My buoyancy still isn't as good as it is with the semidry, but it's getting there. The new undersuit kept me, if not warm, then at least not cold. The new fins didn't give me cramp. Best of all, my buddies were a great bunch of people, and we got to swim around planes, oil rigs and sunken plastic horses (one of which is known as Lord Lucan, hence the headline), then hang out in the sunshine drinking coffee and eating banana cake.

This is a really fun way to spend a Friday.

Misunderstood Sharks

Got back from the GA conference of Unitarians, which was great. I'm considering starting a Unitarian-only blog, just for my posts about Unitarianism, and keeping this one for posts about cycling, diving and random diversions. Luckily, I will soon resume diving, so this blog will get a shitload more interesting.

The GA did provide proof that I can talk about diving anywhere, as I found a fellow Unitarian from Southampton who happens to be a marine biology student. She and I explained to a rapt audience (well, one that was eating its dinner and couldn't escape) that actually, divers love sharks, and they rarely attack humans (sharks, that is, not divers). There are only four species of shark that will regularly attack humans: tiger sharks, oceanic whitetips, bull sharks, and great whites. This is for the same reason that humans don't try to attack elephants; predators don't tend to prey on anything bigger than them unless they're hunting in packs. These four species are the only ones big enough to view something the size of a human as dinner. Humans also bear an unfortunate resemblance to the sharks' favourite prey, seals and turtles. The shark way of investigating anything is "take a bite, see if you like the taste". This is bugger-all consolation, I imagine, if a shark bites your arm off, spits it out, and you're swimming around trying to find your arm and stick it back on.

Although speaking of hunting in packs, there actually is a creature that does this; the Humboldt squid, nicknamed the "sea wolf" or the "red devil". This article gives an excellent recap of why they are scary, scary, creatures. If they lived longer than two years humans would have competition in the "top species" stakes.

I have swum with sharks, and they really are quite beautiful creatures, albeit not very smart. I hope someday to swim with the native British shark, the basking shark. The second-largest fish in the world (whale sharks are bigger), and a peaceful vegetarian. If you're going to swim with something 8m long weighing 20 tons, do not resemble dinner.

Closed, Normal Service Resumes Very Shortly

I'm off for the weekend to go hang out with Unitarians, this blog resumeth next week.

My predictions about last weekend were mostly right. Everyone enjoyed it hugely, but... well... Munchkin is the kind of game where you end up having conversations several days later which involve the phrase "You KILLED me and STRIPPED MY CORPSE even of cards you weren't meant to steal!" whilst the other party looks guiltily at their feet.

Though not too guiltily. It is Munchkin after all.

So, Games Day Then...

It's Games Day at my house tomorrow. This concerns me since there appears to be no faster way to learn which of your friends are untrustworthy, unscrupulous, backstabbing fiends than playing Munchkin with them.

Yes, Alexi Conman, I am looking at you. And no, I haven't forgotten the whole Plutonium Dragon incident.

I've laid in supplies of beer, fizzy pop, pizza and cake, and ensured that we have the necessary individuals present:

1. One frazzled gamesmaster,
2. At least one person who has not played the game in question before, and wishes everyone would just be nice to them
3. A couple of people who actually know how to play the game and will be nice to person 2.
4. A couple of people who actually know how to play the game and will take the existence of person 2 as an opportunity to test out their backstabbing skills to the max*.
5. Someone to sit in the corner and actually not play the game, but provide a running sarcastic commentary on all the players' bad decisions.

* I'm not naming names here, I'm just making a prediction based on how these things pan out. 'Cause, if you're not tough on the newbies, how will they learn to play the game? ::evil laugh::

Still, at least we're not playing these:5 Board Games That Ruin Friendships

Unbiblical Thoughts, 2

Still continuing my reading of Psalms for Lent. Still finding it challenging. Perhaps the hardest thing to grasp is that the Old Testament was written in an age where the individual was less important than the tribe, and women and children less important than men. What mattered was not who you were. It was who you belonged to. I believe it's a testament to all the world's major religions that we can understand their essential truths, though those truths were written in an age when human ways of thinking about the world were utterly different.

I was recently reading Ursula Vernon's story about Susan Pevensie from the Narnia Chronicles, "Elegant and Fine", in which she comments "half my short stories turn up as 'Point of view of the woman in this otherwise well-known story'". I was recently rereading (taking a break from Psalms) one of the Bible's more familiar tales, which also has a lion in it; the book of Daniel.

I'd forgotten how the ending to the tale of Daniel in the lion's den was not that Daniel lived after the lions refused to eat him. It was that the king threw into the lion pit the advisors who told him to put Daniel in there.

Along with their wives and children.

Stuff We Learned At The Sunderland Comics Convention

Which was held last month in Seaburn, and was an excellent way to spend an afternoon.

• The meaning of "Adamtine" by Hannah Berry. I asked her this, and it's related to a crossword clue mentioned in the book. One character is trying to fill in a crossword answer; the word in question is "Rhadamanthine", and the letters he doesn't have spell out "Adamtine". "Rhadamanthine" means "unfailingly just". Make of that what you will. More details here: ConSequential review.
• Hannah Berry is awesome, and her next book "Livestock", is out next year.
• The writers of 2000AD agree that the next Judge Dredd crossover should be Dredd meets the Doctor. As one of them pointed out, the great thing about Dredd is that he can be the bad guy, and he doesn't have to win. 
• At least one writer of 2000AD would like Dredd to meet David Cameron, and the entire British Cabinet. Slowly and painfully.

Unbiblical Thoughts

I've kept my Lent vows for the past week, of reading five verses every day. So far I'm reading Psalms. Some time ago I started at Genesis, and on various occasions have read through enough to get to Psalms. At this rate I'll reach the New Testament sometime in the next decade.

I'm not sure what effect I expected this would have on me. So far, it's mostly confirming me in my commitment to Unitarianism, because if I had to believe every single word of the Bible was the literal divine truth of God's interactions with human beings, I'd wind up at the state of mind aptly summed up as "I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the bastard".

Mine is the Newcomer's Good News edition of the Bible, which is an excellent Bible version to own if you're reading it for the first time. Simple and clear English, with illustrations, footnotes, and helpful summaries of Biblical history at the front and end. I'm happy to own it, but alas, every time I come across a note at the start (which I have no doubt the author sincerely believed when they wrote it, and probably still does) which mentions how the chapter in question highlights God's constant love for his people, or the unchanging truth about human nature, the little sceptical voice that drove me out of my previous churchgoing pipes up with "Only if you have a very bleak view of human nature".

I can't fault the author's of my Bible's edition for their commitment to their beliefs, but after concerted reading of the Old Testament, you begin to wonder what an edition of the Bible would look like if annotated according to modern sensibilities. It could begin with a list at the start of each chapter:
"No. of times God orders the Israelites to slaughter an entire people, down to their children and animals = 2"
"No. of times a man kills another man who raped his sister over the insult to his family's honour = 1" "No. of times women are described as prostitutes = 3".
"This chapter should be noted for the exceptionally bloody bride price King David paid for his first wife, Saul's daughter." (200 foreskins, freshly hacked from the corpses of dead Phoenician soldiers. David was the one who made them dead.)
And so forth.

And yet, the Old Testament contains the tale of Ruth, and the love between two women. It contains the Song of Songs, some of the best erotic poetry ever written. (My edition, rather sweetly, notes that this can be considered as a metaphor for the love between God and his people. I cannot be the only person down the ages who has thought "....really?") It contains the book of Ecclesiastes, the author of whom would be on my "list of people to invite to a drinking party".

Religion really isn't easy or straightforward. It's not comfortable, either.

Trenchant Wryness, the Dogging Song, and Lenten Vows

Is the tone I normally go for when writing blogposts. Which is a challenge when it comes to writing about matters religious or spiritual. It is something of a struggle to unite the side of me that meditates on filling oneself with the energy of the universe, and the side that couldn't stop giggling at the "Dogging Song" by Fascinating Aida.

I actually think one of the difficulties of being spiritual and / or religious in the modern age is that ours is a time when earnestness is not much prized. Knowingness, humour and continual self-mockery are more valuable. All of which I'm fine with, but once you start trying to deal with concepts like the meaning of life, contact with the Divine, and meditating upon one's chakras*, you have to suspend the voice in your head that wants to find the joke in everything. It's not an easy thing to do, for me anyway, and I'm still trying to find a writing style that isn't mocking, and isn't too worthy for words. I don't think I'm getting there, but I can only keep trying. Here's my latest thoughts on Lent.


Lenten Vow

Lent began on Wednesday 18th February this year. Each year, I like to make a vow for Lent, a habit that began as a child at Methodist Sunday School, with the traditional giving up of chocolate. Despite the oft-derided nature of such vows (“diet in disguise”, “First world problems” are among two of the criticisms I’ve heard), I actually think they can be useful. I think it’s good to learn how to overcome habits that can trap us, and learn that we don’t have to be dependent on external sources of pleasure.

Since I became an adult, and then a Unitarian, my vows have shifted, though, from the giving up of things, to the committing to things. Last year, I vowed to meditate for five minutes every day. (If I averaged it out, it would probably have been 2.5 minutes a day. Oops.) Now, I try to make a choice to do something that might help me to develop spiritually.

This year, I have vowed to read five passages from the Bible each day. Happily for me, I’ve done this a few times, and I’m now as far through as “Psalms”, having just finished the Book of Job. As a Unitarian, is this an odd vow? I don’t believe it has to be. I became a Unitarian because I wished to learn from all faiths, and the faith from which our church sprang – Christianity – is one I still want to study.

In an odd way, I get more from the Bible now as a Unitarian than I did in my previous habits of worship. I find it easier now to read the Bible now that I can see it in its historical context, and recognise that these are words written more than two thousand years ago by the wise men of a persecuted Middle Eastern tribe. In 2015, having received an education that introduced at least a brief introduction to the major religions of the world, it’s not necessary for me to believe this is the literal truth of God, and the only truth of God, in order to find the wisdom hidden within it. And if it challenges me, and I sometimes don’t know if I agree with it? Well, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be religion.



* not as painful as it sounds, you can do it lying down.

CyclingDiver Once More... Well Nearly

The first part of my blogging name is accurate again; I'm back on my bike, and very happy about it. I like cycling for a lot of reasons, partly the free transport, partly the ability to move heavy stuff around without knackering my back, but mostly for the same reason kids ride BMXs; it's just fun. Even if I did have to spend fifteen minutes with a headlamp, a tiny screwdriver and a lot of swearing to put the new battery into the bike computer's sensor.

I will be back swimming in the sea tomorrow. Not fully diving - the sea isn't really open for business just yet - but it's good training for when I'm back donning the drysuit to play with the seals. I also managed to run 5K without stopping the other day, and whilst doing this on the treadmill is not particularly impressive, it's still something I'm quite proud. All is well in the domain of CyclingDiver.

The Metaphorical Mantelpiece

I recently realised that my mantlepiece is a metaphor for the confusion of my brain.

Front and centre, the Unitarian chalice. At the back, a souvenir from the Lit and Phil Society. To the right of the chalice, the Mesopotamian Goddess of Beer.

I'm not sure what this says about me. Other than that I like Unitarianism. And beer.

That's That Done, Then

Dry January is complete. The beer has remained unquaffed, the wine has remained unsuppted, the raki has remained stoppered in the fridge. (Where it may well stay - ever drunk raki?)

As for the benefits - I'm sleeping a bit better, my weight has dropped (although I've also been hitting the gym like a fiend), and my skin looks fine. On the other hand, I can't say it's been a really huge difference. But not a bad one.

Mainly, I think I have learned how much I really like beer, and that orange and soda is not an adequate substitute.

Then again, orange and soda doesn't attract advertising like this or this, so I guess it's swings and roundabouts. Onwards to Tuesday night, and the ceremonial First Pint of 2015. I can taste its sweet, refreshing nectar now.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 10: Injecting in the Kitchen

Another funny story from my last but one house. It was certainly full of characters, including at one point, a naked butler. He was not the naked butler for the house, for which I'm grateful, but did work as one in his spare time to earn some extra cash. He was also a bodybuilder, and had the most boring diet I've ever seen, consisting of rice, chicken, Bird's Eye frozen mixed vegetables, and Herinz barbecue sauce. It seemed to work for him, but I can't imagine eating the same thing that often.

He lived in the house around the same time as my now ex-landlord who, towards the end of my stay there, moved back into the house with his girlfriend. (He then sold the house, which is why I left.) I wandered downstairs into the kitchen (that's always where funny things happen), and encountered him and his girlfriend, with him injecting something into her stomach.

I can say with some certainty that I'd never seen someone doing this before outside of a medical context. I eventually plucked up the courage to ask: "Um.... what are you doing?"

"You know we're going on holiday soon?"

"Yeeeesss?"

"Well, this stuff helps you tan, we got it off the Internet. Do you want to try it?"

"Thanks but I think I'll stick with my existing skin colour."

Funnily enough, it did work, at least for his girlfriend, who turned a shade of light brown. He turned a weird shade of orange brown that no human being of any ethnic origin naturally displays. (I suspect he may have taken more than the recommended amount.)

Funny fact; my ex-landlord was a police sergeant.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 9: The Police in My Living Room

Yes, it's another tale of house-sharing. I actually have two stories that fit under this heading. One I don't tell for comic effect, since it was about something illegal (not done by me, I hasten to add), and is responsible for me knowing from first-hand experience that when the police raid your house, they really do bang on the door at 7am.

This dates from when I lived in the West End in a giant house with badly-designed walls. One of my housemates was a trainee policewoman, and responsible for me being a strong contender to win any competition about the biggest surprise you've ever got when you woke up. One Saturday morning, as I staggered down the stairs at my usual pre-coffee dopey amble, I suddenly realised my kitchen and living room were filled with about 15 policemen and women. (This is something of a surprise when you're wearing your elderly pyjamas and dressing gown.)

It turned out they'd had a social the night before for people on the police training course, and all of them had stayed over night at my house. In the living room.

I can only assume they must have slept stacked on top of each other.

Dry January

13 days dry, which is not in the same league as running a triathlon. Sort of the opposite. I don't exert myself to walk to the fridge and open another beer. Yummy, refreshing, Banana Bread Beer (dammit).

I have found that the most common response when people learn you are doing this is "Oh, that wouldn't make much difference to me - I hardly drink". Which is great, and I'm happy I know so many sensible drinkers (although funnily enough, they never seem keen to take up my offer "Well, why don't you do it then - it won't be tricky for you!")

I do wonder if one day I'll come across someone who just replies "Nah, couldn't do it - I like drinking too much".

If You Start The Year By Jumping In The North Sea...

The team of happy divers wades out

 

... it can only improve from that point onwards.

Actually that's not quite true, since I prefer to do my New Year's Day sea swim wearing just about every single piece of neoprene I own. Myself and my buddies headed out over the St Mary's Island Causeway, to admiring gasps (or possibly gasps of disbelief that anyone is that mad) from onlookers. The tide was up to our calves, but this is not a problem when you have 8mm of neoprene on your legs and some sturdy diving boots.

I waved cheerfully to my mother, who hopefully was not having a minor panic attack at seeing one of her offspring jumping blithely into the waves, and jumped in after everyone else.

St Mary's Island swims are usually called "rough water swims", for the simple reason that the object of the dive is to jump off the side of the island, and swim round to the point where the waves break, and splash around in them until you get tired of having seawater up your sinuses, and head back for a coffee and a fresh doughnut from the van in the car park. (Another reason St Mary's is such a popular site for divers.)

There were no seals, but there were plenty of waves. We jumped around in the waves, struck silly poses on rocks (and were promptly knocked off them into the sea), and performed the diving exit technique known as "Undignified Scramble" to get out. Wading back over the thigh-high water on the causeway, I waved to my (possibly relieved) mother, and made the universal hand signal for "Have you got the Thermos?"