Even If What You Write is Utter Shite...

Well, I've just about finished the management diploma. My friends will not doubt be relieved to see the switch in the topic of whining from "management diploma" to "selection for redundancy interview" (in about three weeks).

I'd like to write an intellectual post about what I've learned, but the main thing I've learned is; even if what you write is utter shite, KEEP GOING. It doesn't have to be perfect.

That might be a useful lesson.

Next stop: hand in the assignment, and copious amounts of beer.

I Still Like Magic Malta (2013)

Having revisited Malta from 2012, I find myself thinking back to 2013, when I headed off to the small island in the Mediterranean with a different bunch of divers, since the Dive Centre trip was full. As I make a point of remaining uninvolved in dive centres politics (it's one reason I will never be a Divemaster or Instructor), this did not cause any problems. Again, the memories have boiled down to the following....

• Driving the most knackered-looking Jeeps in Malta. I don't normally drive overseas, and I've never driven a Jeep before. My confidence was not improved when I realised it had a manual choke, which I have never seen before in my life. On the other hand, in fairness, no-one is going to rent a good Jeep to divers, who will only drive it down muddy paths and sandy beaches, and cover it in dripping wet dive gear. Eventually, I did get the hang of pulling the choke out when starting it, and managed to master planning turns some time in advance. (At least our Jeep did start after about three tries. Another group had a Jeep that had to be push started by driving it in circles round the car park near the hotel, cheered on by the watching divers, with another Jeep pushing it along until the engine turned over. Pure Chuckle Brothers.)  Fortunately, the great thing about driving in Malta is that if you drive like a maniac, everyone just thinks you must be a local. As I parked the Jeep at the end of my first day driving it, someone asked if I'd locked the steering wheel. I replied that I didn't know it had a steering lock. I was told to look under the driver's seat. Under the seat, there was a thick length of chain bolted to the Jeep's floor, and a huge padlock. I stuck the chain through the steering wheel, padlocked it, wondered briefly who on earth would be desperate enough to nick this Jeep, and went off for a pint.
• Learning that how fit someone looks, or is, doesn't necessarily mean you can guess how fast they'll go through the air. I had one buddy who was slim and went dancing for a hobby, but still sucked down air like a thirsty man with a pint of cold beer. After we ended up with him "borrowing" some of my spare air (via the spare "Octopus" mouthpiece on my tank), as we headed back from having not seen the Um el-Faroud wreck due to his running low on air, we agreed that henceforth he should have a 15L tank. He got one, we paid a man with a boat to take us out to the wreck the next day, and all was well. (Except that we managed to miss the entrance to the harbour with the exit steps, and had to surface and swim back to the steps. Few experiences quite match the unique sensation of surfacing in a unfamiliar sea with no boat cover and thinking "Bugger, I don't recognise that very steep cliff AT ALL". Never have I been so glad to see a fisherman, who took a minute off from catching grouper to wave an arm in the direction of the harbour. It took fifteen minutes' swimming, but that could be worse.)
• We couldn't dive the Blue Hole as the water was too rough, so did the Inland Sea of Gozo instead - the one with the tunnel. We carefully made a plan; swim through the tunnel, stay at 30m, and explore the ledges on the other side before heading back. We got through the tunnel, and everyone - whether through narcosis or over-excitement - completely forget the plan and started chasing a grouper deeper into the sea. Outside the tunnel, the sea bed slopes away and keeps on sloping; it's a popular site for technical divers, and it is here that the Savage Toilet of Gozo was encountered. The sea bed drops to 60m, so this was not going to end well if people went deeper. I actually managed my deepest ever depth on this dive. It would have been nice to have planned that, rather than have it be the result of dropping deeper quickly to avoid getting kicked in the head by a grouper-hunting diver! After that, I decided the best thing I could do was not make things worse, and level off at 30m whilst my Divemaster buddy G went off to round everyone up, check the air, and herd them back through the tunnel. G did his thing, then started looking around frantically. I realised he couldn't see me as I was directly above him, and got out my trusty rattle. I rattled away, he looked up and spotted me, mimed wiping sweat from his brow, and we headed back through the tunnel. It was actually a good dive - the Tunnel is world-famous. We headed through it, pausing for a safety stop and a few last grouper photos. As we surfaced, there came the plaintive wail from behind me "Has anyone seen a GoPro? Mine's not on my mask any more..."
• Hunting for a GoPro camera not much bigger than a box of matches, in a very large inland sea with the visibility of sandy milk. As G said afterwards, if we had come straight out instead of searching, the next result would have been the same, except we'd have had time for an extra cup of tea and some more chips. On the plus side, I did encounter another grouper which posed happily for me, so the search wasn't entirely wasted.
• Waiting patiently in the tea shop for the two divers who had tried to dive the Blue Hole to return. One of the golden rules of diving, and life, is "Don't go anywhere you can't get back out of". They had got into the water with us, swum round to the Blue Hole, realised the conditions were too rough to actually get out of the water, run low on air, and had to surface swim all the way back round to the Inland Sea. It took them an hour. We were pleased to get them back safely - and they were known as "the swimmers" for the rest of the trip.
• Diving the Karwela, a wreck on Gozo I didn't see last time around. The Karwela is one of three wrecks off the coast of Gozo near the main ferry terminal. The most famous sits next to the Karwela; it's the Xlendi, which is very pleasant if you like looking at the bottom of a ship - it turned over on the way down. The Xlendi is just about diveable for a recreational diver, but it's mostly popular with techies, who like to take several tanks, a compass and a reel of navigation line down there, and go have a poke around inside it. The advantage of this is that the Karwela is dead easy to find; you just swim out, put your face in the water, and swim along following the steady stream of techie divers underneath you swimming out to the Xlendi. That was a really, really fun dive. 
• Attempting to get the most knackered jeeps in Malta up the very, very steep hill track that leads to and from the Karwela dive site. We got the most experienced driver, R, to take over for this bit (he was excused driving duties for the holiday on the grounds of it being his day job as a taxi driver). The only way to do it was the classic "put your foot down on the flat to get momentum, and DON'T STOP" - not easy on a steep hill with three divers plus all their gear. On the other hand, we did laugh ourselves silly as the two lads in the car in front of us tried three times to get up the hill. Eventually, they rolled the car back down, one of them got out, and the other put his foot down. The car got up the hill, pursued frantically by its former occupant (possibly having visions of walking back to the ferry terminal).
• Meeting Big Sy, a cheerful fellow with a full-face diving mask, the build of a rhino, and the amiable personality of a man who goes through life knowing that everyone who might cause him trouble takes one look at him and realises that he could probably put his thumb on top of their head and push them effortlessly into the ground. Big Sy was (is!) a very good diver, and provided one of the more memorable moments of the trip. As we circled the Coralita, we found an octopus, which darted under a huge rock. Big Sy took a look at the rock, shrugged, picked up the rock, and threw it to one side. I swear til this day that the octopus looked surprised.
• Diving the X127 / Coralita. We were there in November, not October as in 2012, and the weather was getting rough. On the final day, we stood under the dive shop awning, peering out at the torrents of water and pondering what to do. Some peeled off to spend the day in the pub. The rest of us decided to get one more dive in, and headed off to the only site we could get into - the Coralita. This small landing craft sits at 20m inside Valetta harbour, where it was sunk by the Nazis. To get to it, we had to battle our way through the floods, caused by some truly torrential rain. It was the first time on Malta I'd been really grateful for the Jeep, which ploughed through the water as though it was nothing, whilst around us cars floundered. The dive was a good 'un, with plenty of fish, along as we shivered our way through getting changed in the wind and rain, it was weirdly reminiscent of diving back home. Just like being back home, we remedied the cold with a hot chocolate and a sandwich at a nearby cafe, where I pulled out my Malta dive guide, looked up the wreck, and made a nice realisation. The X127 had come from the same place we had. It was built in Tyneside.

I Like Magic Malta

This post's a blast from the past. Right now, I'd rather dwell on happier times, and look forward to happy times to come, specifically when I take myself, my diving kit and my holiday savings off to Malta in October, where sunken boats and much beer await. (I could write a post on how my studies are going, but I think it is fair to say that the only people who really give a monkey's about the training needs of managers in my organisation are a) the managers, b) the trainers, c) me. None of whom read this blog.)

I've had two trips to Malta; one in 2012, one in 2013. This is 2012's highlights*. Funny how, if you leave it a while, you realise what you took away from the experience:

• Learning that every trip really needs one person whom everyone else can privately agree is a bit, well, unique. Ours was P. P wore his wetsuit and a straw hat at all times. Wearing a wetsuit is not odd if you're going diving. It is odd if you are out of the water for an hour having lunch, and it's 35 degrees C in the shade. 
• Learning that you should not give the person everyone else thinks of as a bit, well, unique, the map when trying to drive to a dive site on Gozo you've never been to before. Gozo is the sister island of Malta, and home to one of the Mediterranean's most famous dive sites, the Blue Hole of Gozo (picture above). It is a running joke among visitors to Malta that the Maltese took the road signs down to confuse the Nazis, and never bothered to put them back up again. Picture the scene. I'm in a car with five divers, one of whom is trying desperately to navigate his way through Gozo's twisting roads in an overloaded Volvo, three of whom are clinging on for dear life, and the fifth is P, who was staring at the map with an expression like an alien trying to comprehend Crufts. I, the driver, asked harriedly as he approached a roundabout, "Do I turn right here?" P looked up, and uttered in a tone of mild interest: "You can turn right if you want to turn right." The second time this happened, the iron entered the soul of one of the other divers, L, who leaned forward, fixed P with a gimlet stare, and explained: "You've got the map, man! The way this works is that YOU tell HIM where he needs to go!"
• Exploring the Blue Hole of Gozo, when we finally got there. It is truly a unique dive. Like the Blue Hole of Dahab, you enter a blue pool, descend about 25m, and swim out into a stunning underwater landscape. It is one of those moments where the answer to the question: "Was it worth learning to dive?" is answered "Yes", for the rest of your life.
• Learning that, no matter how much you like someone, by the time they've uttered their catchphrases "I Like Magic Malta" and "Hey Guys", five times a day for a week, you will want to silence them by buying them a drink at every opportunity. 
• Night diving at the Popeye Village (Anchor Bay) site, and spotting a really enormous sea snail.

• Seeing a cuttlefish for the first time. 
• Learning that diving twice a day in the sunshine, then spending an evening in the pub with your mates, is a truly excellent way to spend a holiday. 
• Malta is nice, and has cheap pizza.
• Malta also has a load of old Arriva buses plying its streets, which can make things confusing... you step out of the airport, and the first thing you see is an Arriva bus pulling up on the left hand side of the road. It's hard not to wonder "Holy crap, did the pilot turn the plane round in mid-air?"
• Getting your own beer fountain in the pub sounds like a better idea than it actually is. 
• Diving the Um el-Faroud - one of the biggest sunken ships in the Mediterranean - really is all it's cracked up to be. 
• Comino's Blue Lagoon is an amazing sight. So are the nearby caves, although they are the site of one of my more alarming dive stories. I was happily trolling along in the "Fish Bowl" area, a shallow dive site popular for an end-of-day dive, when an anchor suddenly thudded into the sand a foot away from me. At the time, I just thought "Ooops!" and sculled off to the edge of the Fish Bowl. Only later did it occur to me that this story could have had a very different ending.

 More tales of anchors and beers coming soon!
* yup, this is the same holiday when I discovered the hard way (i.e. 18m down) that my inflatable BCD was leaking air.

The Capriciousness of the Scuba Gods

I stayed away from taunting the Scuba Gods last week, instead keeping my mouth shut on Facebook, and trying to organise a dive at Beadnell last weekend. This would not normally be any sort of challenge, but with one dive school having students-only sessions at Brown's Bay on both days, and the other having all its instructors and senior divers off at a training session, it ended up requiring the tactical skill of Alexander the Great, and the diplomacy of Nelson Mandela (knowing me, it may have ended up the other way around).

Anyway, I ended up at Beadnell Bay on Sunday morning with three other divers. Happily, all were of a similar or more advanced level of experience to me. I'm still getting back into the swing of things, and babysitting a less-experienced diver isn't something I want to do until I'm back in practice. One was an old buddy from Malta 2012, who had only ever dived Beadnell as an instructor. This, in practice, means you see bugger-all of the dive site, as your main concern is to ensure that the students pass their tests / don't get lost / don't breathe water. He was keen to see the site, and asked me what the plan was.

I hadn't dived Beadnell in two years, but memory is a fortunate thing - that and spending an hour on Google the night before planning a route. I say "planning"; the great thing about Beadnell is that your dive plan can basically be "dive Lady Hole: swim out with reef on right shoulder, swim back with reef on left shoulder". Whilst all water should be respected, you would have to try quite hard to injure yourself at Beadnell*. I did my very best blagging, managed to sound like I had an idea of what I was talking around.

The name of this dive site is a cause of some amusement to new divers, who think "There must be some other reason it's called that". In fact, most divers have got the sense of humour of twelve-year-old boys, and there is a small swim through some rocks halfway through the dive. This is a narrow cleft in some pink rocks, with dark kelp fringing it on either side, and if you look at the photo above, you will see that it is called Lady Hole for exactly the reason you think it might be. 

One reason I was so keen to get in the water was that with sunny weather, we could hope for great visibility, and we got it: 6-8m clear water, which is good for Britain. The crabs, lobsters and mackarel were out in force, and I got some lovely pictures of a lobster. After 40 minutes, my buddy made the twiddly-finger sign of "Time to turn round and head back". I did my best underwater pirouette, and then I saw it.

An anglerfish.

Anglerfish are not common on dives; they are a native British fish, but mostly prefer to live deeper down, beyond the reach of most divers. (They're related to the famously-hideous deep-sea anglerfish, but live on the bottom and ambush their dinner, rather than swimming freely to catch it). Every so often, though, you do spot one that has taken up residence in the shallows. A friend recently spotted one at St Mary's Lighthouse, and right there, just as we turned, was the first anglerfish I've seen in Britain in my diving career to date. (Well, that wasn't about to become my dinner - their other name is the monkfish.)

My buddy was already in front of me, so I got his attention by the traditional method of "grab fin and tug hard". We admired the fish, which was happy to pose for a photo, whilst I turned happy internal somersaults. Few things are more rewarding than taking someone on their first dive on a dive site, and finding a really interesting thing to show them.We left the anglerfish to its dinner, and headed back in search of ours.

Next stop, I hope: Time to Play with Seals.



* Yes, if my next post begins "Broke My Leg on a Rock at Beadnell", you'll know the Scuba Gods have been at it again.

Taunt Not The Scuba Gods

I posted on Facebook a week ago that come hell, high water or crap visibility, I would be back in the water at the weekend. I should have known better.

There was certainly high water; the tide was up as high as I've ever seen it at Beadnell. One possible clue to how this was going to go was hearing the senior instructor comment, as we stared out at the tossing sea, was "Don't worry, its still diveable".

As myself, my dive buddy A and A's teenage daughter paddled out across Beadnell Bay, Daughter of A peered downwards and remarked, with the wisdom of youth, "I can't see anything".

"Perhaps it'll be clearer nearer the reef," I replied, which is one of those things you know is actually a pile of crap when you say it.

"I can't even see your fins," Daughter of A muttered behind me.

Twenty minutes, later, after I’d popped my head up for the third time after losing A and Daughter of A in the silt cloud, A commented: “Coffee and cake on the shore?” 

"Coffee and cake on the shore," I agreed. Ahead of me, two pink fin tips headed in the direction of Beadnell village.

I guess last Saturday was a first, of a kind, it remains the only time I've actually called off a dive due to bad viz. Then again, it's the first time I've ever found a reef by swimming into it.

Highlights of Glastonbury 2014

This post is based on the Guardian's "Best and Worst of the World Cup" interviews. My highlights of Glastonbury 2014:

Best Set at the Festival: I've been asked this a few times, and it's been really hard to choose between Metallica and Kasabian. Metallica probably, for sheer uniqueness - never before has a metal band headlined Glastonbury, and they were refreshingly grateful to be there. Also, giant beach balls!

Best Performer at the Festival: I'm tempted to go with Ed Sheeran, which is not something I would ever have said prior to Glastonbury. I just admire the sheer nerve it must have taken to stroll onto the Pyramid Stage, just one 21-year-old man and his guitar, in front of thousands of people who have just seen what will be the iconic performance of Glastonbury 2014 - Dolly Parton. If he was nervous, it didn't show one bit, and everyone had a great time.

Glastonbury Moment: Always a personal thing. For me, managing to sneak out of the bar on my lunchbreak, quickly purchase some magic muesli (£3.50 for a huge bowl of muesli, yoghurt and fruit, which would not be a bargain anywhere else, but the average price for lunch at the festival was £4-£5, so, winning!) and head to the Other Stage to catch White Lies' set. One of their songs, "Death", is one of my favourites. I got there in time to hear it live. It's those little moments when it all comes together that make things perfect.

Personal Highlight: See above, but also the way the team bonded. Fun was had by all. Also the Glade dance tent was awesome, I'd have stayed there all night jumping up and down if my feet had let me.

Biggest Disappointment: The coach containing one of my volunteers, which was due in at 1.30am, turning up at 3am, having taken a detour nearly to Wales due to their having a driver who had no idea where he was going, and who hadn't driven a coach in ten years. I was literally having to turn the mobile data on my phone, log onto the AA Route Planner, and text directions to the volunteer, who was battling the force of a nearly flat phone battery. I had brought a paperback, a snack and my warmest clothing, but having to sit there for an extra hour and a half listening to an unlucky guy who'd lost his festival ticket having the same argument with the festival security staff every ten minutes was not a lot of fun.

Non-music attraction of the festival: The hammocks just down from the festival sign. I'd have stayed up there, swaying gently in the breeze, for a lot longer if I'd been able to.

Trickiest moment: Trying to avert a walk-out due to a preventable injury to one of my team. I entirely sympathised with them, but walking out would have meant the end to our volunteering with the WBC, for good. We managed to work things out.

Innovation I'd like to see for 2015: That the git who kept the music system in the campsite tent blaring loudly until 3am is identified and prevented from going anywhere near it. After three repetitions of "I Wanna Be Sedated", the joke wore very thin.

Fondest memory: A special mention to James the Organiser, for getting my injured volunteer to see Dolly Parton in a buggy.

Back from Glasto

There it is in the background, being pointy.

Actually I've been back for a while, but it's taken til now to recover the energy to blog again. I still have muddy gear requiring clearing, but most of it's been done - one bit at a time.

The festival generally went well, apart one of my volunteers having a preventable accident, and the subsequent industrial relations issues that followed. Fortunately a full-scale mutiny was avoided.

Everything else went quite well. This year I accepted that I would need to repeat anything I said several times, and consequently (I hope) came across as less of an irascible bastard than I have in previous years. I happen to be one of those people whose default brain setting for "the purpose of speaking" is "convey necessary information". This is, as I've discovered over the years, not necessarily the default setting for the rest of the world. As the Killers once sang, smile like you mean it, and be happy.

I even managed to phrase the answer to the inevitable question more tactfully. Each year, I can guarantee I'll have a conversation like this:

"Is that the Pyramid Stage?"

"No, that's the Other Stage."

"How will I know when I've found the Pyramid Stage?"

This year's reply: "Well.... it's really big, and pointy."

(This year's reply, in my head: "It looks like a sodding great pyramid.")