The Tales We Keep Telling, 8: Conversation in my Home Town

Much as I love my family, there's a reason I don't live in my home town. (I usually joke that it's because I didn't want to get pregnant, become a hairdresser or work in a shop. I respect people who undertake any or all of those options, but that was never going to be me, and in the 2000s my home town didn't have a whole lot else to offer me. It's got better since, but still...)

A conversation I had there when I returned a few years ago sticks in my mind. I was visiting my family, and called in at Costa Coffee. Behind the counter was someone I'd done my GCSEs with. We did the hi-nice-to-see-you conversation, and she asked "So what are you doing these days?"

My reply: "I moved to Newcastle, got a research job there, I go scuba diving on a weekend, thinking of buying a flat... how about you?"

Her reply: "I'm serving you a coffee."

What followed was one of those rare moments of telepathic silence, when two minds are thinking the same thought in unison.

Specifically: "Yep, there's really nowhere else this conversation can go from here."

Headbutted a Bee

I'll admit that my approach to blogging is to pick the most bizarre-sounding title I can squeeze out of anything that happened to me recently, then fit the post to it. I'm quite proud of this one, as it really did happen.

I was heading over the Armstrong Bridge in Jesmond on my bike, probably doing about 15mph, then felt something smack hard into my forehead, then slip down behind my glasses. I pulled over, removed the glasses, and a very stunned bee fell out.

I'm not sure which of us was more surprised.

The Pike of Ellerton

After nearly half a year off, I jumped back into the water yesterday, or rather waddled into it in an ungainly fashion. It is difficult to do anything but waddle when you are toting 15kg of compressed air and steel, plus assorted neoprene and rubber, and another 10kg of lead round the waist.

I was back at Lake Ellerton, of "The Swamp" reputation. Ellerton is not particularly exciting, but after half a year off, that was what I was after. If you're going to discover all the things you've forgotten and any bits of your gear that don't work, best to do so in 6m of water with no current and no time pressures than out in the Farne Islands, with their drop-offs, and their rocks, and their currents with unappetising nicknames like "Fast Lane to Norway". I had a new buddy, A, who trained at the same dive centre I did, plus my drysuit and my camera, in the hope of catching sight of the Pike of Ellerton.

I was there early, so I did the traditional diver's thing of wandering down to the shore line and peering thoughtfully at the water to judge the visibility. I could see the bottom (at Ellerton this is not a given), so decided that was a good thing. I also realised that the Swamp does have one other advantage, of providing free entertainment when the triathlon swimmers in their very thin wetsuits jump in the water. It's even more entertaining if you're wearing a drysuit and can wave at them cheerfully whilst they shriek and splutter.

A arrived shortly after, we kitted up, got in the water, and set out towards the buoy marking the underwater platform. I made the welcome discovery that none of my kit was leaking so far (the old diver's joke is that there are two types of drysuit; ones which leak, and ones which haven't leaked yet). A made the unwelcome discovery that his mask was leaking, but after a certain amount of fiddling about, we found the platform and the guideline, and set off to find a car.

Ellerton's underwater attractions, such as they be, are connected to each other by guidelines, making it easy to find your way around. The first one you come to is an old car, I am guessing a Ford Escort, but by now no-one can tell. We approached it with some relief after swimming along the line for a few minutes, and then we saw the Pike of Ellerton hovering elegantly above the car.

Unfortunately, it saw us, decided it didn't like the bubble-blowing monsters, and vanished into the murk.

We made do with looking at some very large perch hiding inside the car, then headed off in search of the van and the caravan. (Yes, there is a caravan at the bottom of the lake which borders a caravan site. Speculating as to how exactly the caravan got there does leave you wondering "did someone's brakes fail?".) As the dive drew to a close, and the mug of coffee called, we headed back along the line, and there, in all its striped glory, was the pike.  This time around, it obligingly posed for a few photos. It occurred to me that this might well be the largest fish I've swum with, at least in Britain, and it really is a magnificant creature. I hope no-one ever catches it.

A and I headed back to the dock, hauled ourselves out, rinsed our gear, and amused ourselves by drinking coffee and swapping tales of all the divers who have ever annoyed us on dive trips. (There was some overlap.)

It also turned out that A's weekend job is being a marine mammal medic. We agreed that there is nothing cooler than being able to say, when someone asks you on Monday, "What did you do this weekend", being able to reply: "I rescued a whale".

The Tales We Keep Telling, 7: Escapades on the Town Moor

Some time back, I did the taxi survey of Newcastle, which involved spending a lot of time sat in a parked car on the Bigg Market on a Saturday night, counting taxis and ignoring drunks. I was lucky that the person I was counting with was a fellow diver, P, with whom I swapped many tales of fish and other interesting things. He told me a couple of stories from his time as a fireman, one of which you can read elsewhere on the blog ("Gordon, Don't Be Such A Dickhead"), and another which I shall recount here. 

He and his friends were once working a late shift one Friday, when the call came in to go out to a car that was parked on the Town Moor. Was the car on fire? No, the car was not on fire, but the people in it couldn't get out.

P and his colleagues hopped in the truck and went round to see what the trouble was. It was something which I suspect did the rounds of all the shifts that week, and for several weeks after.

A couple had parked their Porsche on the edge of the Town Moor to enjoy a little recreational fornication. They had put the front seats back as far as they would go, and had been trying to have sex on the back seat. Sports cars not being especially roomy on the inside, this involved a certain amount of contortionism, and the man (who was on top), had thrown his back out completely and was unable to get up. His extremely irate partner had called the fire service.

P and colleagues stood around for a minute or so assessing the issue, then P leaned forward and spoke through the window: "Sorry, there's no way we can get him out without cutting off the roof."

The woman began shrieking that they couldn't possibly do that, the car was worth an enormous amount, she would sue, they couldn't possibly cut the roof off. The shrieks were so long and so loud, that P and colleagues agreed to try opening the door and getting the chap out that way.

They tried valiantly for twenty minutes, but it was clear that, due to a combination of the size of the now-wishing-the-earth-would-swallow-him-whole man, the tiny size of the door, and the fact that he was clearly in too much pain to be easily moved, this was not going to be a goer.

P leaned in through the window and explained the situation. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we can do this without taking the roof off."

He leaned back to avoid the shrieks, and, seeing her left hand, added: "Sorry, but it's the only way we'll get your husband to the hospital."

The woman fixed him with eyes like daggers of ice, and spat: "He's not my husband. This is my husband's car."

They did, P told me, eventually have to cut the roof off the car. How the woman explained this to her husband is anyone's guess.

(I doubt it would be any consolation to her to learn that this sort of thing happens to other people too - from the excellent Nee Naw blog: 101 Embarassing Sexual Accidents.)

"Community" Blew Up My Television

Kind of old news, by now, but it deserves a mention. I'm about to start watching "Community" again, after a pause of about a year, but doing so with some trepidation.

I used to have a really old, cathode ray TV, that came with me from my old house. Buying a new TV was on the list of things to do at some point when I moved into the new flat. The decision was made for me when, halfway through an episode of "Community" the picture suddenly began getting smaller and smaller. I couldn't work out whether it was the TV or an effect from the episode, until I heard the "fzzt", smelled the burning wiring, and saw the smoke coming from the back of the set.

It probably says something that I was torn between two reactions when I saw this: "Quick! Unplug the TV", and "Man, if I don't get a picture of this, no-one will believe me!".

Anyway, I unplugged the TV, which didn't actually catch fire, although the smell of burnt electronics lingered for a few days. I now have a flatscreen, and will give "Community" another shot this weekend. If it blows up my TV again, I'm sending the producers the bill.

In other news, the boiler is fixed.

A Bit of a Stopper

So, I recently wrote my will, which is perhaps an odd thing to do at 33. Until now, I never needed one, as I never had anything to leave. Then someone pointed out to me that if I met an untimely end, the mortgage insurance would cover paying off my mortgage, and I would have a certain amount to leave behind. I like things to be neat and tidy, so I found a lawyer through Amnesty International's "Make a Will Week". This happens in March each year. Amnesty arrange for a free will-writing service, in the hope that people who use it might be inspired to leave a small legacy behind (which I have).

My will is pretty simple, mostly along the lines of "leave money to godchildren, jewellery to best friends, dive gear to dive shop, some gifts to charity, and my family and brother get the rest". The actual writing involves a certain amount of depressing speculation, it being a lawyer's job to point out things like "If your parents die, do you want your brother to get the lot? What about if he dies before you?". It is best not to flippantly reply "By the point this becomes an issue, I won't care, I'll be dead".

I don't always see death the way other people do. Having Asperger's syndrome, albeit very mild, means there's a lot of social detail you tend to miss. I've been called a Vulcan in the past for holding views such as my failure to understand why people eat cake and then complain it's making them fat. Either eat the cake and enjoy it, or don't eat the cake and save the calories, but eating the cake and then complaining about it seems to me to be pointless. For me, the inevitability of death is something I view much in the category of paying tax and getting rained on in autumn; it just happens. It just is. Why not talk about it, when it will happen to everyone? I don't get the urge to avoid talking about death, but then I also don't get why people don't provide for their old age. You know you'll get old, you've seen other people age and need extra support, so why don't you prepare for when it will happen to you? I plain don't get people, sometimes.

Nevertheless, it was quite a stopper to be holding in my hands the draft will. Staring at a piece of paper heading "The Last Will Of..." with your name below it is hard to process. This is a document whose sole purpose to exist is to deal with the fact that, one day, I won't. There will be no more me. That's how things are, but actually seeing concrete proof of it... Still, I'm glad I have the will. It does give you peace of mind, in the end.

I think I'll go and eat some cake now. Without complaining about it.

Saga of the Boiler

And having gone from the saga of the wiring (still unresolved as of this date), we move to the saga of the boiler, which decided to pack in about three weeks ago, and still isn't fixed despite the best efforts of Centralheatingman (an everyday superhero, or at least I'll consider him as such if he fixes the bloody thing - it's putting up a fight). I tell myself that it's a good way to appreciate what my parents grew up with, neither of whom, being born in the 1950s, had a centrally-heated house. Apparently my Dad and his brother used to yell "Mum, it's cold!" down the stairs on winter mornings, and I'm pretty sure my Mum once commented that she and her brother and sister used to put their school uniforms in the bed to warm them up overnight during the winter.

There is a reason everyone in my family got central heating as soon as we possibly could.