After Friday night's marathon Blackadder and beer and talking crap until six in the morning session, Saturday didn't see either myself nor Dizzy emerge exhibiting symptoms of wanting to move about much with noise in the background. We did play a good game of Combat Mission on my computer (victory for my inexperienced-but-plentiful-and-submachinegun-wielding German mountain troops over Dizzy's crack British airborne defenders) but apart from that it was a pretty damn uneventful day. Eventually we realised that we'd have to leave the videos back because they'd been out for the week we're allowed, so with an ill-concieved promise to Britta that we'd be back in about three-quarters of an hour Dizzy accompanied me to the video-rentin' iron. Well, to cut a long story short we emerged after much enjoyable browsing with The Omega Man, Barry Lyndon, Bullet in the Head, and Once Upon a Time in America. That'll keep us going for another week alright.
We got back half or three-quarters of an hour late and Britta was watching a movie on television and once that was over it was time for us to be going to bed anyway, because we had to be up at half seven the next morning. Urgh.
Dizzy had done his PADI Open Water certificate (that's the course I did) the last time he was in Australia - it's been nearly two years since he was last diving in fact, and he hadn't done any dives apart from the four that are part of the course. In the meantime his dad had started diving back in Ireland and got really into it, bought all his own gear, was involved in a hair-raising accident and so forth. So Dizzy had plenty of time to talk diving with his dad and with Tom, a highly enthusiastic scuba-diving friend of ours, and thus is far better versed in diving lore than am I. However he's less experienced than even I am, and on top of that is really rusty on the skills he learned on the course. He'd talked excitedly about diving for ages, so I'd been nagging him to join the diving club that I joined (I hate seeing people getting lethargic) and he'd expressed some interest but hadn't done it, so eventually I let it drop. Britta, however, was similarly perturbed by his inactivity on a subject he'd enthused about in the past, and picked up on the nagging where I left off, carrying the ball the last few yards necessary, and on Thursday, seemingly only a few minutes after I was in the shop myself, he signed up to the club and for the shore dive trip on Sunday. He was a bit concerned about the possible atrophy of his abilities but the best way to find out is to try.
So we were supposed to meet in the shop at half eight in the morning. Sunday morning. Urgh (again). I managed to sleep really badly on Saturday night as well, but hauled myself out of bed when awakened, ate some toast and honey, grabbed my gear and shuffled down to the shop with Dizzy. Here we were greeted by half of the company-owning partnership, Mez (I don't recognise, and therefore keep forgetting, the name it's short for) with the news that the guy who was supposed to be the divemaster had called in sick (you can't dive when your nose is stuffed up, and apparently this guy had it bad) but that somebody was coming to replace him, but this person didn't know the place we were supposed to be diving (a place deceptively called Freshwater, actually salty) so would we mind going to Shelly Beach instead? No we wouldn't. Do any of us (including the other attendee, a guy called John) know how to drive? John does, although not too well. Okay, the plan was we'd take the company ute to Shelly Beach, with John driving and the replacement divemaster reading the map. The gear was already loaded up, so once she arrived, we took off.
We didn't get TOO lost, and got to Shelly Beach before very long, which is a small beach in a kind of cove or something I don't know the correct name for. There were plenty of people there, going diving, learning to dive, swimming or just sitting about on the beach. We annexed a picnic table and dumped our air tanks under a tree, and changed into our wetsuits, assembled our gear and put it all on. The divemaster lady (not a qualified divemaster, but that didn't matter seeing as we could be doing this by ourselves) paired myself and Dizzy off as buddies (it's standard practise for people to dive in pairs so they can keep an eye on each other - referred to as buddies, and there's a little hand-signal for "where's your buddy?" and everything) because it was John's first dive since his course too, and it was six months since he'd done his, putting me in the odd position of second-most experienced diver.
We shambled across the beach and down a boat slip ramp until we were deep enough to flounder about incompetently trying to get our fins on, and once that was done submerged. It was pretty much just follow-the-leader because all us newbies were a bit short on confidence to go off by ourselves, but that was fine, and the water there was FULL of life. Fields of seaweed on the bottom, schools of little shiny fishies, stacks of rocks with spiky things and individual interesting fish hiding amongst them, and a big blue fish called a blue groper (about the size and dimensions of a trumpet case or sewing machine box or slab of beer stubbies, those being the things I can see here that look about right) who followed us about for pretty much the entire dive - I don't know if it thought we'd feed it, or it was in love with my fins (also blue) or it was just wondering what the hell kind of fish we're supposed to be. The deepest we got was about four and a half metres, but there was plenty to see. We turned back once somebody got down to 100 bar of air left (we started with between 200 and 250 each) and I was still on 150 so had plenty to play around with, so I spent most of the return journey charging back and forth, swimming around rocks, careening through the middle of schools of fish and generally wasting my air because why not.
After the awkward stagger back up the shore and removal of gear, Dizzy produced the flask of hot blackcurrant-and-apple purple he'd had the brainwave of bringing. Nobody wanted any except me and him, but it was fantastic to get something warm inside, when we were getting chilly fast due to the breeze and soggy wetsuits. It was about an hour until we were all geared up with new tanks and ready to go down again (we'd spent a surprising 40 minutes under on the first dive). On the way into the water, however, Dizzy's main regulator started spewing out air and he wasn't able to shut it off. Much shaking and slapping later it appeared to be behaving itself again, but he'd run through quite a lot of air by then. Anyway, we submerged and set off. The scenery over this side of the bay was much the same, although with more sandy-bottomness. I collected a few interesting-looking shells (one of which later turned out to have something living in it - ooops - so I threw it back) and practised turning upside down and spinning about and being immature. The divemastery lady found an octopus hiding under a rock and pointed it out to us - we couldn't see much of it, but what we could see was pretty ugly. The bottom got down to about eight and a half metres in depth before Dizzy's air ran low and we turned back, and we'd spent thirty-five minutes down there when we surfaced, which isn't bad at all, considering.
After drying off and packing up, we drove back to the shop and rinsed off all the gear, and then myself and Dizzy came home, dumped our own gear in fresh water in the bath and started being hungry. I had an absolutely fantastic tuna sandwich and was exceedingly contented for the rest of the afternoon, as I filled out my logbook and read a bit.
That evening, we went to see the movie Bulletproof Monk in the cinema. I'd heard it was bad, but that's usually perfectly okay by me, and although it started off in such a manner as to make me dubious, by the end it had totally redeemed itself several times over. My usual circle of acquaintances certainly likes to see itself as having the cynical Generation X love of bad movies, but when it comes to the crunch don't seem to have the courage of their convictions and I am left alone - my enjoyment of the grandly bad Deathwatch being a case in point. I'm sure the same will happen here. I'm only sorry I missed Ghost Ship in the cinema, apparently it was pretty eye-bleedingly bad. Well anyway I came out of the cinema in high spirits and having thoroughly enjoyed my day.
Today I stayed in bed for a very long time, which I also enjoyed thoroughly. I should probably do some more job-huntery soon, although I have to get the bloody voicemail service set up on the phone before I'm comfortable leaving it for too long now.