Ever Feel Like You Don't Know Your Own Country?

I have little else to say on the election result at this moment. Other than some quiet sobbing and unnecessary drinking.

On the plus side, Eric Pickles is no longer the minister against local government. But when you quit looking on the bright side of the catastrophe, the catastrophe is still there.

The Beadnell Car Park Song

I'd like to fill this space with a tale of diving derring-do. Unfortunately, the last time I went diving I nearly gave myself the bends. That tale can wait a bit longer.

Instead, here is a musical interlude, to be sung to the tune of "Human" by the Killers, and invented by my good friend J.

Beadnell is, of course, the site of many a North Sea dive. The car park has seen more semi-naked divers than the site of a very bad (and specialist) soft porn shoot.

"I did my best to notice
If the buoy was on the line
Up to the surface of the water
I was cold but I was fine.

"Sometimes I get nervous
When I see the film "Jaws"
Close your eyes, clear your ears
Hold the cord.

"Are we stupid?
Or are we divers?

My hands are freezing
My head is cold.

"And I'm on my knees
Searching for an O-ring*
In a car park
Near Beadnell."


* Small rubber ring, used to create a leak-proof seal between the valve on top of the tank, and the first stage of the regulator used to supply the breathing gas to the diver. Slightly smaller than a penny. Shares the common ability of all tiny mechanical objects essential to a complex process occuring, of flinging itself down the nearest drain at the least provocation. The likelihood of this occurring is expontentially increased if the diver in question doesn't have a spare.

The Tales We Keep Telling, 12: The Short Arm

This story dates from when I lived in a shared house in the west of Newcastle. One summer afternoon, we held a barbecue, and all the housemates invited their friends. One of my housemates' friends, who helped me do the salad, had a short arm, ending just after the elbow joint.

I thanked her for helping chop the veg, and she grinned and said: "Yes, but I have to be careful when I do that... I once nearly made someone faint in A&E."

"How did that happen?"

"You see this scar on my arm?"

She held up the end of her arm, which had a neat white line near the end.

"That looks nasty."

"Yeah...." 

The story was that she had been chopping peppers one evening whilst starting to cook dinner. Her method was to pin down the pepper with the end of her short arm, and hold the knife and chop with her hand. Unfortunately, one of her housemates came in the kitchen behind her and let the door slam. She jumped, the knife slipped, and she cut herself across the end of the arm.

The cut was in an awkward place and wouldn't stop bleeding, so in the end she bundled a tea towel around the end of her arm, and went to A&E for stitches. This was a weekend, so it was a busy night, and she was sat there for a while.

Next to her was a guy who was possibly the worse for wear. She noticed him staring at with a faint expression of horror.

"What happened?" he eventually asked, with a faint tone of dread.

"Oh, I cut myself with a big knife."

The drunk paled and started to look woozy. "Did you find it, like?"

My housemate's friend followed his gaze to the bloodstained tea towel at the end of her short arm, and suddenly realised what he was thinking.

"No, it's okay! My arm has always been this length!"

The Tales We Keep Telling, 11: The Old Dudes on the No. 62 Bus

I frequently catch the no. 62 bus home from the pub of an evening. The no. 62 winds its way along the Byker Bridge and Shields Road before striking out north to Heaton, and the clientele covers a wide range of folks. At that time of the evening, though, there's usually a few older Geordie chaps returning home from the pub.

One evening, I was sitting behind three of them on the top floor, as the bus rounded the corner from Shields Road up towards Chillingham Road, past what is now the Lord Clyde pub, and was then called Peggy Sue's. This was about 11pm, and there was what the police would probably call a "domestic disturbance" taking place outside the pub.

The old dudes and I stared out of the window and watched, much like the pub's bouncer. They umm'd and ahh'd.

Old Dude 1: "She's not going to go home with him."

Old Dude 2: "Nope."

Old Dude 1: "Now she's going to hit him over the head with her shoe."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 1: "That's what it's like round here on a Tuesday evening."

Old Dude 2: "Yup."

Old Dude 3: (with tone of solemn contemplation): "When you two eat a boiled egg..."

::pause::

"...do you have it with salt?"

We've Found Lord Lucan (Not Really)

Yesterday I bunked off work to go diving. If there's one thing that makes a dive more enjoyable, it's being able to take advantage of the sunny weather to do it. Bonus points if everyone else is stuck in the office. (It makes up for all the times you have to haul yourself out of bed on a rainy Sunday morning, whilst everyone else has a lie-in.)

We headed down to Capernwray Quarry in Lancashire. The weather has not been conducive to good sea diving recently (too stirred up), but several days' sunshine suggested the visibility in the quarry would be good. I wanted to try out the new gear I've bought to help with my drysuit; new fins and undersuit. I also wanted to swim through a plane. Capernwray Quarry recently bought and sunk an entire Cessna aircraft for people to swim through when diving, and the photos are amazing.

Unfortunately, my photos weren't going to be, because I managed to forget to attach my white slate onto my diving jacket. I need this so that the camera can take a reading at depth and figure out what white looks like at the depth I'm diving at, so that it can adjust the colour balance and compensate for the lack of red light. Annoyingly, the silicon pouch I put in the camera also failed; it must have been too old to absorb all the moisture in the air inside the camera housing, which led to condensation in the housing, crap photos on the second dive, and me having to put the camera in the airing cupboard to dry out when I got it home. That said, I took the photo above, so it wasn't a dead loss.

I also got to practice diving with the drysuit, which is coming along nicely. My buoyancy still isn't as good as it is with the semidry, but it's getting there. The new undersuit kept me, if not warm, then at least not cold. The new fins didn't give me cramp. Best of all, my buddies were a great bunch of people, and we got to swim around planes, oil rigs and sunken plastic horses (one of which is known as Lord Lucan, hence the headline), then hang out in the sunshine drinking coffee and eating banana cake.

This is a really fun way to spend a Friday.

Misunderstood Sharks

Got back from the GA conference of Unitarians, which was great. I'm considering starting a Unitarian-only blog, just for my posts about Unitarianism, and keeping this one for posts about cycling, diving and random diversions. Luckily, I will soon resume diving, so this blog will get a shitload more interesting.

The GA did provide proof that I can talk about diving anywhere, as I found a fellow Unitarian from Southampton who happens to be a marine biology student. She and I explained to a rapt audience (well, one that was eating its dinner and couldn't escape) that actually, divers love sharks, and they rarely attack humans (sharks, that is, not divers). There are only four species of shark that will regularly attack humans: tiger sharks, oceanic whitetips, bull sharks, and great whites. This is for the same reason that humans don't try to attack elephants; predators don't tend to prey on anything bigger than them unless they're hunting in packs. These four species are the only ones big enough to view something the size of a human as dinner. Humans also bear an unfortunate resemblance to the sharks' favourite prey, seals and turtles. The shark way of investigating anything is "take a bite, see if you like the taste". This is bugger-all consolation, I imagine, if a shark bites your arm off, spits it out, and you're swimming around trying to find your arm and stick it back on.

Although speaking of hunting in packs, there actually is a creature that does this; the Humboldt squid, nicknamed the "sea wolf" or the "red devil". This article gives an excellent recap of why they are scary, scary, creatures. If they lived longer than two years humans would have competition in the "top species" stakes.

I have swum with sharks, and they really are quite beautiful creatures, albeit not very smart. I hope someday to swim with the native British shark, the basking shark. The second-largest fish in the world (whale sharks are bigger), and a peaceful vegetarian. If you're going to swim with something 8m long weighing 20 tons, do not resemble dinner.

Closed, Normal Service Resumes Very Shortly

I'm off for the weekend to go hang out with Unitarians, this blog resumeth next week.

My predictions about last weekend were mostly right. Everyone enjoyed it hugely, but... well... Munchkin is the kind of game where you end up having conversations several days later which involve the phrase "You KILLED me and STRIPPED MY CORPSE even of cards you weren't meant to steal!" whilst the other party looks guiltily at their feet.

Though not too guiltily. It is Munchkin after all.