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.")

You Could Not Make It Up

I was recently asked what the mood in my office was like, following The Team Meeting. "Resignation with a side of gallows humour" was the best answer I could think of; we've reached the point where when someone says "I find gallows humour helps me cope", someone else says "Don't say that too loudly, next week there could be an actual gallows".

We did laugh quite a lot recently though, when it turns out that this month is Health and Wellbeing month in the office. We were all given a piece of paper and invited to write down three things that would improve our health and wellbeing at work.

I had to remind myself that you should only quote The Thick of It among other people who've watched it, as I think I shocked a couple of people by remarking that my employer expressing concern for my health and wellbeing whilst proposing to make half my team redundant in three months' time is a bit...

God or No God Alley

When my church discussed how we could promote ourselves to others, one popular idea was to have a stall at the Newcastle Community Green Festival, where we might encounter like-minded individuals who would be interested in hearing about our message of religious and spiritual liberty, and cake.

Now in its 19^th year, the Newcastle Community Green Festival happens each June in Leazes Park in Newcastle upon Tyne, and exists to “spread a message of environmental protection and social justice”. Last weekend, along with many others, we rolled up at Leazes Park beneath an ominous sky, and set out our stall of posters, leaflets, free cake, badges, and Unitarians happy to talk about our faith.

Three hours later, the heavens opened, and from then the Saturday became something of a mud bath. Nevertheless, we were having a great time. Based in the big blue Information Tent, we encountered many people, from the genuinely curious, to those who had dashed in to avoid the weather, to people who were happy to stop, pick up a free badge and some cake, and have a chat about Unitarianism into the bargain. The most commonly asked questions were “What’s Unitarianism? I’ve never heard of it” and “What are your core beliefs?” Most people were open-minded and happy to hear about it, even if one or two decided it wasn’t for them.

As if to make up for the preceding day, Sunday was warm and sunny, although the ground was reaching Glastonbury Festival levels of mud. Everyone in the tent helped put straw down to make the conditions underfoot a bit easier. Meeting the other stall volunteers was a very enjoyable part of the festival.

We encountered people ranging from Sea Shepherd to the North East Humanists and the Green Party, several of whom expressed an interest in Unitarianism, or at least in hiring the church’s rooms. The Humanists had their stall opposite ours; we could only wonder if someone with a sense of humour allocates the stalls (at one point we were referring to our part of the Information Tent as “God or No God Alley”).

I also took the chance to wander around, catch up with several of the Newcastle crowd, and watch a few bands. Fun and pizza was had by all.

Intermission

This blog took a break last week, as I stuck my work-related woes on the shelf, took some leaflets and a banner down from the shelf, and went off to run a stall at the Newcastle Green Festival. Write up coming soon. Here's a picture!

What to call this post?

The original title of this post was "Time to Depart?", but when you suffer from depression and your friends know it, you should probably not create posts with names like that, nor go on Facebook and post enigmatic-sounding depressed posts which cause people to run around worrying, texting you and leaving messages of support and pleas to know if you're alright.

The inspiration for it was the uniquely nasty experience of sitting in The Big Meeting About The Future Of The Team, AKA The Redundancies, reading the proposal for the team you work in and thinking "Actually, this doesn't sound too bad, I could get on board with this" and finding, hidden away in the middle, the sentence which indicates that the thing you do, the particular thing you've spent ten years doing and studied hard to learn how to do? Your team won't be doing that any more.

That doesn't mean I'm fired. There will be jobs, and I could probably apply for one and get it, or at least stand as good a chance as anyone else of getting it. The question for me, as for everyone else, is whether I actually want to do it. There's not really an easy answer to that one.

When you're depressed, you have the little voice whispering in your head youareastupiduselessuglycunt or Thereisnohopenotformenotforyounotforanyone. Sometimes there's another voice, suggesting something like Did you ever want to take a hammer to your life, smash it up, throw the pieces in the air and see what pattern they made when they landed? If you went somewhere else, somewhere without all the scars of the past places where you've let people down, failed and disappointed them, somewhere no-one knew you or had any expectations of you, would you be happier?

The truth is, I have no idea, and now is a bad time to decide. So I will do what needs doing, I will complete what I have committed to between now and September, and the decision will form itself in my head. I'll still be here.