I am a naturally fair person, if I write only glowy happy stuff I get guilty and I have to go away and write the other side of the story because that’s fair and stops people from making huge errors in judgement – boy did they brainwash me with the informed consent stuff back in the day!
So to balance the incredibly gushy posts I have written recently about the joy aquatic please note the following issues should you decide to take up diving, particularly if you are female :-
1. VANITY – If you are vain you might as well forget this now, diving is like childbirth, you’re not going to look good doing this, it’s actually impossible. Between the rivers of snot you produce, the hair that tangles into an uncombable ball and the deeply unattractive pressure marks your mask will leave on your face this is not a sport for those who have to look good. You’re never going to surface looking like some sleek haired super model with your skin gilded by the sun.
Underwater your skin is greenish white like a long dead alien, but fortunately you will be unrecognisable in any pictures your evil dive friends will take due to mask and regulator distorting your features like some comedy iPhone app. I now routinely take out a contract on anybody possessing surface pictures of me on the basis that some grubby eco warrior may turn up and try to set me free but I will allow below surface pictures to see the light of cyber space as even my own mother wouldn’t recognise me. HINT – Impress your Facebook friends with your adventurous lifestyle, cut and paste a library scuba diving image to your timeline, nobody will know it isn’t you.2. DIGNITY – Close on the heels of vanity comes dignity, prepare to lose it if you take up diving. By the time some sturdy dive master has heaved you into the inflatable dive boat and you have landed in the foot well looking like the kind of aquatic mammal that washes up on beaches and has the locals trying to encourage it back into the open sea you will realise that the last smear test you had in front of a class of teenage trainee nurses was actually discrete and kind by comparison. Before you ever get to the boat you will have wriggled and levered yourself into a tight wetsuit on a public beach whilst tourists gaze on having been distracted from the latest blockbuster by the way you bend the laws of physics by forcing so much flesh into neoprene – it’s all a bit TARDIS, we’re all bigger inside our wetsuits! If it has taken two men and a wrestling hold to zip up your wetsuit you can ramp up the humiliation factor by ten.
Side Note:- Please excuse any typing errors, I’m trying to write this whilst Nick is hoovering my keyboard! He doesn’t realise cigarette ash is all that holds it together and is an excellent conductor.

Nick a man of many attachments - he even has a compressor nozzle that attaches to his BCD hose so he can clean his dyson!
4. TEDIUM – You will become very boring, because you are a convert and converts tend to bang on a lot about stuff with tedious zeal. New Scuba divers only talk about diving; most sentences will begin “When I went diving in the Red Sea/Maldives/Stoney Cove…..” even if they are only talking about the price of bread. It’s amazing how any topic can be turned to talking about diving. If you ask Nick the time the reply will be “When I started my dive at Scapa Flow the time was…….” To all my friends and family who are now being subjected to the endless tedium of me talking about diving, boring for Britain about my diving courses, bitching for Britain about my lack of funds to buy diving kit and my constant assurances that they are not too old/tired/frightened/unfit or not interested enough to dive, I apologise, it will wear off, I think. It could be worse, I could like football.
5. CHOICE – You will have to decide between a new pair of Kurt Geiger boots and an Oceanic dive computer, unless you are nicely wealthy, and this is a tough call (I went for the Oceanics Dive Computer, I’d already bought the Kurt Geigers in August, so they don’t count under the three week rule as espoused by my good and sensible friend Victoria). Equally all travel of any type will revolve around diving opportunities, it is now impossible for Nick to pop down town for some milk without fitting in a quick reef dive. Duty trips home to the UK will now be taken under extreme duress and only during very cold times of the year and stand a good chance of being cancelled if Turkish Airlines come up with a special flight price to the Red Sea (which they bloody well have! 99 Euros returns! Argh!).Despite all of the above I don’t think I could now give up Diving, the plusses do actually outweigh the negatives and I was never big on vanity or dignity and I’ve never been the kind of girl who sits on the beach looking lovely whilst the boys play.
The people help, without a doubt, this whole thing is starting to look suspiciously like a social life, between the ever changing montage of visitors who brighten your diving day to the locals who bring you into their circle there is a lovely camaraderie that has nothing to do with nationality or booze and that’s a good thing, because it’s thin on the ground here.
And then there is the trust. Whilst I may not trust with my life every person I dive with there are many that I do, including all of my instructors, and for someone who is as quietly lonely as I am, who generally sorts everything herself, no matter how awful, to have a group of people who generate calm feelings of support around me, well that’s priceless and worth any negative. Thanks to them all.
. . when I got to the end I was ‘quietly’ moved – a glimse behind the veil. May your dive waters be warm and calm.
Loved the narrative as usual, chuckling my way all the way through to the serious bit at the end. Oh how I wish I was in K at the minute;- SCUBA could be handy here since the rain is hissing down. Perhaps water skiing would be an alternative pastime for us here!
I gather from Mr Nick that you will be joining us underwater next time you are here…that will be fun….and even now, at the end of October the sea temperature was still 24 degrees tonight when we dived. Karyn
It is now so obvious how much you are enjoying this, not so long ago you were telling me you were a little nervous about the whole diving thing. Now you are sounding like an old pro (pardon me lol) and I am so delighted you have found something so wonderful that is just you. x
It really is brilliant and I still get nervous but that’s part of it. Did my first night dive tonight, it was amazing, all the wildlife below and all the stars above when you surface, it was utterly fantastic! We are so lucky. Karyn
As ever, beautiful, comic, informative writing, Karen – and – even more important, perfect timing. Alan Fenn summed it up beautifully in his comment above.
For someone I have never met, you make me feel extraordinarily fond of you.
Take care and have wonderful fun in this new, exciting stage of your life!
Axxx
You have to laugh at it all, honestly me in a wetsuit, it’s not a good look but it’s a brilliant way to spend the day. Funnily enough it makes me feel better too, which is brilliant because I’ve been a long time sad despite being a natural born optimist. And thank you, fond of you too xxxx
I stick by the three-week rule, and I was heading towards the newly-converted try-divers at the last paragraph, until I scolled back up and re-read Points (1) and (2) … nice idea and you write to the nearly-converted xxx
The three week rule works for me! Come try dive with me next season, I will look totally shit and you will look wonderful in comparison, you can’t say fairer than that 🙂 xxx
Being married to a beautiful woman diver with over 1500 dives for 45 years, I must say she is equally as beautiful today as when she started diving 35 years ago.