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No doubt by now you will have raised your usual brimming New Year glasses to Beachcomber. All real divers will have toasted his saintly name, and coupled it with the fervent hope that he may long continue to highlight the rights and wrongs of British diving, fining the sinners and praising the lords on behalf of the Lifeboat Fund.
Hindsighting is, of course, a very suitable occupation for the approach of New Year, and helps to pass the time while we are all waiting for the saw to cut a nice big hole in the ice. So it was with Beachcomber, as he reviewed the year just past.
However, you may be surprised by his choice of the top happening of last year. It all started with the arrest of a "diver" one midnight in April, on the bank of a muddy Leicestershire lake.
Six months they gave him, for collecting a mere 1158 golfballs. He did not deny the charge, though as it turned out later he was not a real diver and just groped around in shallow waters for his booty. He said that he had been living for the past 10 years on the money he got from selling the balls back to golfing outlets.
So off he went quietly to jail, but ordinary divers, who had no idea that they were living on the edges of goldmines (known to landlubbers as golf clubs) rose up in fury at this sentence.
As did hundreds of golfers who suddenly realised that their sliced balls need be an undeclared loss no longer, and demanded to know what their club secretaries were doing about buying back their balls from local divers.
Such was the fuss that our hero had his sentence quashed and was told that he should ask clubs' permission before collecting lost balls from other water hazards.
This about-face has changed British diving. Every diver is now a highly skilled golfballer. Average earnings can be £650 from 4500 balls recovered in a three-day week, which is handy, though nothing like American earnings.
My top Florida Leak tells me that the US recovery record is 90,000 balls in four days from one lake, which caused the water level to drop by a metre. This, of course, also tells you a lot about the standard of American golf.
Golfballing in southern Florida is not the same as a quiet British plop-in. In Florida, water hazards include aggressive 2m-long alligators, but the five diving deaths on courses in the past 12 years have all been put down as straightforward drownings.
In the States, golfballing diving companies often pay for the exclusive rights to mine the ponds on courses. Divers working for such companies can retrieve as many as 4000 balls a day and get paid 10 cents a ball. Golfballs recovered in good condition resell for a dollar each.
Back in Britain, so popular has golfball-diving become that I hear tell of a new qualification about to be launched by a leading dive organisations. Top badge will be "First Class Baller".
Awards will, of course, be at the diving officer's discretion. See all you New Year ballers on the course?
In the autumn of the Old Year, I asked for updated proverbs with diving in mind. Everything comes to him who waits, so here are some you sent me:
He whose wife navigates is lost... A buddy in need is a buddy indeed... Better be an instructor's darling than a young diver's slave...
Fish and suits smell in three days... He who pays the skipper calls the dive... If you don't like the dive, get off the ladder...
Needs must when the devil dives... There's many a good dive played on an old regulator... When poverty comes in at the door, RIBs fly out of the window.... When the DO's away, the novices will play...
Any more? Or perhaps we should we say: All good things must come to an end.
Another surprising event of 2002 was the interest - and some fury - raised by my revelation that most divers were not above taking the odd fish for their supper, despite the current belief among the greens that fish and lobsters have rights.
This emerged from my other revelation that the little hand-spear known to decades of divers as the podger was still being employed by thousands of real divers in pursuit of a main course.
Before you contact me to say that you have never seen a real diver carrying a podger, I will tell you where you can find them. I am indebted for this information to Andy, who entered a weight of 56lb in an attempt to set the record for the largest catch of a podger-wielding diver in my 2002 competition, but failed to reach the current record weight of 70lb.
Andy tells me that his short 30cm stainless-steel podger lives inside his dive-flag tube, which is strapped to his cylinder on all dives.
For heftier work, however, his crab hook converts to a 1m version via a sliding handle, which covers the deadly point.
Attention all journos, as childish journalists like to call themselves. Just because we have started a new year and Beachcomber appears to be in a gentle mood, do not make the mistake of thinking that all is forgiven, and that you can make as many errors as you like in copy about diving.
There will continue to be no mercy on diving on oxygen instead of air. And creating new names for diving equipment will be dealt with even more severely.
For example, my Lincolnshire Leak has sent me a large extract from his local paper.
He draws my attention not only to the fact that the try-dive reporter was convinced that he was using oxygen tanks, but that the journo's next comment was "being in control of where I wanted to be in the water was one of the trickier skills to master, as the buttons on the level finder were very sensitive..."
A level finder? Do you have one of these useful gadgets? Please send me one by return...
My first contribution of 2003 for the Diver Lifeboat Fund must come from the crew of the RIB off Lulworth which suffered acute engine failure.
The cox'n called the Coastguard who, hearing that there were divers in the water, called the lifeboat station, which called a helicopter.
And, guess what, when the first of those rescuers got aboard the RIB, he flicked the kill-cord switch back on and the engine started at once.
All's well that ends well. Except that I do not wish to know who might have pulled the kill-cord by accident. I am just waiting for five crisp cracklies from all aboard the RIB for the Diver Lifeboat Fund. It will make ever such a good start to the New Year, don't you think?
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