The Tales We Keep Telling, 5: Life Saved By Not Wearing a Helmet

This isn't really a Tale We Keep Telling, as it's only been told once, and not by me. However, I'm going to nick it, because it's awesome. I freely admit it may not be as good as the original, and I may have skipped a few details, but I believe the gist is intact...

I was sitting in the pub one night, when, somewhere around the second round, a friend piped up with "I know someone whose life was saved by not wearing a helmet".

"How did that happen?"

It turned out that the helmetless survivor liked abseiling cliffs as a hobby. The tale started in traditional fashion: "You should always wear a helmet, but he was in a rush..." The helmetless abseiler and some of his buddies had gone for a Saturday trip out to the cliffs, abseiled down, and started up, when my friend's acquaintance noticed that there was a problem with a rope.

He went down with only one rope to hold him (there are supposed to be two). You can guess what happened next: the rope failed to hold him, and he slipped, cracked his head hard on a rock, and plummeted downward to the rocks beneath under the gaze of his horrified friends.

"They were expecting him to start bleeding or something, but he just lay there on the rocks. It turned out, he was completely floppy as a result of being knocked out, so he hit the rocks very relaxed, and survived."

"That must have been quite a relief."

"Well, then he starting floating out to sea..."

The friends then discovered that they had no mobile reception, and sprinted inland to call the Coastguard (mental note to self: I'm going to add "Check mobile phone reception" to my dive safety plans from now on). Fortunately, they got there in time, the lifeboat got there on time, and the now thoroughly-soaked, concussed and bruised abseiler was retrieved from the water and carted off to hospital. He survived.

"And just think, if he hadn't had a helmet on, he might never have survived," my friend concluded.

It is a mark of the awesomeness of this story that people waited a whole five seconds before asking: "Wouldn't it have been better to have two ropes AND a helmet?"

We agreed it probably would. Still, I think this guy qualifies for an honorary Darwin award, and those are the best sort of Darwin awards to have.

Dryathlon Champion

Well, I have done the Dryathlon. Completely dry January, right up to the end. A lot of people asked me on Monday 3rd February, "How pissed did you get at the weekend?", but the honest answer is, "Not very". I had a glass of white wine, that was it - didn't feel like any more.

Did I learn anything? Mostly, that you don't need alcohol as much as you think you do. It's easy to get in the habit. Also, that whilst I can sit in the pub with my friends and a soft drink and still enjoy myself apart from the odd pang, it's surviving a whole day working on a budget consultation with no promise of a glass of Chardonnay at the end of it that's the challenge. In other words, my job drives me to drink.

Back drinking now, but more relaxedly. It's like I've realised, if you don't drink at a party, or on a weekend night... let it go. There's no compulsion. Just relax, and enjoy, with or without the booze.

Valentine's Day in the Office

Overheard in my office, between two people not in a relationship with each other: "It's Valentine's Day, so I got you a dental dam".

"I didn't know they came in grape flavour."

Sometimes I wonder if a) I attract random weird stuff happening around me, b) my standards for "weird" are lower than everyone else's, or c) random weird stuff actually happens all the time, and I'm the only one who takes notice. Answers on a postcard, please...

Nearing the end of the Dryathlon

I've now raised over £100 for Cancer Research. not bad for giving up the booze for a few weeks! It's been a useful experience; too easy to get in the habit of drinking every time you go out. Still looking forward to a pint at the end though!

Not Much To Report

I missed a blog post last week. Trouble is, there's not anything very exciting going on. I mean, there's stuff going on. But does anyone other than me really care about management assignments and fixing the boiler thermostat? (I'm not even sure I care about the first one.)

So, I'll keep going, and there will be more detailed blog posts when I'm doing something more interesting, like drinking or falling off my bike or chasing seals or something.

Onward!

Dryathlete

I'm doing the Dryathlon challenge, where I give up the booze for a month to raise funds for Cancer Research. (Sidenote: if you want to do Dry January and you mean it about giving up for the month, do it for charity and tell everyone.) I've occasionally wondered if I'm overdoing the booze. That, or hitting thirty a few years back really did for my ability to drink and not get hangovers that stick around for whole days. So, Dry January it was.

So far it's going well. I feel better. Sleep better, less depression, more energy.

On the other hand, I'm yet again helping run the consultation on Newcastle Council's budget for this year. Sitting in a pub and refusing the beer? Easy. Surviving a week of that project and not getting home and diving into the Chardonnay? Not so easy.

Two weeks to go. Wish me luck!

Start As You Mean To Go On

I ended the last year watching Doctor Who with The Best Friend and Beloved Godson #1, and began this year by swimming in the sea at St Mary's Lighthouse. I've had to explain a few times to people that a diver's New Year Swim is not like the ones that make the papers, where people run into the sea wearing swimsuits, and then quickly run back out again (good choice!). We were wearing every bit of neoprene we had. My kit included: swimsuit, rash vest (basically a long-sleeved t-shirt made of 1mm-thick neoprene), 5mm-thick wetsuit (mine also has a neoprene vest inside it for extra warmth), neoprene socks, 5mm neoprene dive boots, 5mm neoprene hood, 5mm neoprene gloves, 5mm neoprene wetsuit jacket over the first wetsuit, I think you get the idea.

We clambered out over the causeway and the rocks, to the amusement and bafflement of passers-by (it was bloody cold and windy that day) and jumped off a rock into the sea. It was sufficiently high that I had time to yell "Geronimo" on the way down.

The swim itself was great fun. We swim with fins, and a diver with fins can cover distance much more quickly than an ordinary swimmer. I wore my mask and snorkel; no-one else did, but I'm not fond of getting seawater up my nose. This did allow me to have a good look down at the sea, which had all the gin-clear clarity and warmth of runny mud. No diving there for a while. On the rocks, a retriever barked repeatedly, as if saying "I don't know what these foolish humans are doing, but I'll keep watch until they stop doing it".

I really want to do this more often. I'd forgotten how much fun it is just to swim without all my dive gear on, fond as I am of it. We were like human seals, splashing around in the waves and playing on the rocks. It was surprisingly not-cold in the water. We were in for about 40 minutes, then splashed back ashore to get changed in the car park (yes, my hobby involves exposing myself in car parks...) and enjoy a warm doughnut and hot chocolate. One of my buddies observed that you probably put back in the calories you burned on the dive by eating the doughnut. I replied that it's lucky I wasn't trying to lose weight, then. The doughnut was great.