Life-turns 5. Lament to lost activities - diving

Alternative title: how am I going to explain this if we have a visitor?

It was even harder getting into all this clobber than my caving gear. It was tougher still adopting the correct pose while wearing my fins - which don't allow for easy lifting and bending of the leg. So this entry may not make it onto life.turns, and I don't think I have the energy left to dress up like this again today. What's worse, for some reason the camera did not upload a date, so the moderator may reject it. I had to enlist the support of Wifie for this one as I couldn't move quickly enough in these fins after the self-timer was set.

We have no pond in our garden to pose by, so I have used the washing up bowl as a prop, but unfortunately I did not position it well enough to show all of it in the cropped picture.

I've only been on one diving trip, so this maybe a bit of cheat as a lamentation to lost activity, as this activity barely started. Some years ago, I had a trip to the Red Sea for a week to learn to dive. Half way through the week, I contracted a cold and my nasal passages became thoroughly bunged up. When diving, it's important to equalise the pressures in the inner ear, or else risk bursting one's eardrums. My Eustachian tubes became thoroughly clogged and I could not equalise the pressures, so I was unable to complete the last two dives to get my PADI qualification.

I suppose I have regretted not finishing my diving course. I grew up watching the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and I always fancied diving with whale sharks and humpback whales. For a long time I was keen to become a marine biologist until the lure of plant ecology caught me.

What I did learn on my diving trip, though, is that you can see almost as much while snorkelling, in fact maybe more as you are not having to constantly worry about whether your air supply is running out, have you gone too deep, where has your dive buddy gone, and what happens if you're sick.

Diving is also one of those activities that attracts a certain sort of bloke who wants to dive deeper and longer than anyone else, and to be able to boast about it in the bar afterwards. Like climbing, there are opportunities for accumulating vast amounts of technical gear, which appeals in particular to the male collecting instinct. Being interested in seeing fish is for many a secondary consideration.

I could have completed my diving course back home. There is a dive centre nearby in a flooded limestone quarry, but somehow diving in murky water with the occasional pike doesn't have the appeal of the Red Sea or Seychelles coral reefs. I was amazed at the diversity and brilliant colours of the reef fish, one of my favourites was the aptly named Picasso trigger fish.

Anyway, the point of owning all this gear, is that it has been bought to allow us to snorkel lakes and tarns in the Lake District, as a way of finding out what grows in them. If all goes to plan we will be snorkelling Red Tarn on Helvellyn next Monday.

A report will be duly posted. That said I am running out of time to complete a set of life.turns poses, so will have to concentrate on that over the next few days.

For those that have followed previous posts, note that the grass has been cut, though after many weeks of neglect it is looking threadbare.

If you prefer something more normal, there are a few images from my walk this morning on Flickr