Depressing Realisations, 1

When you are listening to music as a soundtrack for preparing for the fourth time to interview to keep your own job (I'm rapidly reaching the point where I think, I can't do this again, this is the last time), put Pulp's "Common People" on as a soundtrack for revising tackling inequality, and thinking, this song came out when I was 13.

It would be nice to think that in twenty years' time we'd moved on enough as a society that it was a historical curiosity, instead of the grim reality that it's more relevant than ever.

On the other hand, I have identified the song that will be my personal manifesto if I get booted (if you're in a hurry, skip to: 1.55)

The Tale of A Rose

When I learned we were due to have a Flower Communion at my church (a traditional Unitarian Ceremony), one thing I immediately thought was “I must take a rose in”.

I have a rather lovely rose bush growing in my back garden. It’s a “Forever Friends” rose, which is apt, since it was given to me as a moving-in gift by one of my best friends, J.

J and I have been friends since we were 14. We went to the same secondary school, and found ourselves sitting next to each other in GCSE Biology class. This was lucky, because the teacher was not especially concerned about arriving on time to his classes, and we soon got to talking to each other. It’s one of my few friendships – well, actually the only one – where one of the first bonding moments occurred over a shared refusal to dissect a lamb heart. (Her due to lifelong vegetarianism, me due to a lifelong unfortunate tendency to faint at the sight of blood.)

Following our shared dissection refusal, our lives took similar paths, as we moved to a different school to do our A-levels, went to the same university (Durham), and ended up living not far from each other. Our friendship has held steady through life’s rocky moments, and there have been some very rocky moments, but I am now the godson to her two adorable boys, who like to come around and rearrange my house for me every now and then. I particularly wanted the flower I would take to the Flower Communion to be a rose from the rose bush she had given me.

I did, however, face a problem. Since I had deadheaded it (you know you are at a certain point in life when the word “deadhead” enters your vocabulary), the rose bush, for reasons best known to itself, had decided to grow all ten of its flowers on a single stalk, as you can see. I really didn’t want to cut all of the roses off, but they had very short stalks.

I left deciding about it late, until the morning of the Flower Communion, itself, then went out with the secateurs to take a look. I took a closer look at the bush, and smiled.

As if it had read my mind, there, tucked away behind the flower stalk, the rose bush had grown a single perfect pink rose.

I clipped the rose carefully, tucked it into a bag, and carried it to church.

Here We Go Again

So, I have the date for my redundancy selection interview towards the end of September, and the deadline for submitting a written expression of interest.

Words don't quite capture how much I really don't want to do this again. Unfortunately, the only thing I'd rather do less is "not have a job", so here we go. I may be off the radar for a while.

In better news, I have, finally, achieved my diploma!

Sea-Flowers (Back to the Inverted World)

A piece I wrote for my church's Flower Communion.

Flowers are marvels, and beautiful in two ways. Firstly, they are beautiful simply to look at, but secondly, they are beautifully designed for their function, of allowing the plant to reproduce itself, and create the next generation of flowers. Insects and flowers exist together in harmony; the insect transferring pollen from one flower to another, and receiving its reward in the form of nectar. Yet there are no sea-living insects, no water-bees to transfer pollen or its equivalent between undersea flowers. So are there no flowers beneath the waves?

 

This is a plumrose sea-anemone, taken at St Abbs. Sea-anemones, of course, are named from land anemones…

Because it is very difficult for a human eye to look at a sea-anemone, and not immediately think “It’s a flower!”

The sea-anemone is fascinating, because it inverts the relationships we are used to with land-flowers. As most people know, it’s actually an animal, with a foot, a long tube-shaped body, and the familiar fringe of tentacles that make it look so flower-like under the water.

As most people also know, the sea-anemone’s behaviour is less like that of a land flower, and more like a Venus fly-trap. It stays still most of the time, but should a small fish or crustacean come near its tentacles, the anemone will swiftly sting it and eat it for dinner.

 Yet some creatures are immune to this; clownfish or porcelain crabs. Like a bee on a rose, the clownfish, or crab, and the anemone live together, each providing food and protection for the other.   

A highly-prized photo for divers is to capture an image of a clownfish or crab lurking within its anemone home; I haven’t managed it, but others have! In addition to its larger house-guest, each anemone contains many single-celled algae within it. The anemone provides the algae with a safe home, access to sunlight and protection from predators, and the algae provides its host with food and oxygen.

Anemones are not the only “sea-flowers”. Another beautiful animal is the feather-duster tubeworm, which feeds on particles filtered from the water around it with its long filaments:

The Book of British Marine Life comments that “There are few finer sights in our waters than a group of plumrose anemones swaying in the current”, which I agree with.  

Like so many things in nature, it is a marvellous sight. Above the waves, the flowers and insects exist side-by-side, each benefitting the other. Beneath the waves, the anemones may not be plants, but like their namesakes on land, they too exist as part of a marvellous web of life. I am truly lucky to be able to see a bit more of that web of life than many other people, and I hope you’ve enjoyed me sharing some of it with you.

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.