Holiday divers targeted by criminal element
As the diving-holiday season goes into fifth gear, my worldwide spread of Leaks are telling me some nasty things about holidays in warm waters. Divers in paradise should take great care, because they are now regarded as the top soft touch by thieves operating on islands or palm-fringed shores.
     An obvious reason for divers being singled out as easy marks is that even your average thief can work out that when you set off for a morning dive you will be gone for a set amount of time.
     He also knows that a two-dive trip is very unlikely to return early to shore. It is also unlikely that his victims will arrive unexpectedly back at their hotel rooms.
     Shore-diving presents different opportunities. In fact my Leak, who has several favourite shore-diving locations on his patch, watched a thief at work on a car parked on the shore. It had been carefully locked up but it didn't take long for him to break in.
     The thief also displayed a good knowledge of diving, watching both bubbles and his watch and not walking away until both told him that his victim and his buddy were decompressing.
     What our tea-leaf didn't know was that not only was my Leak observing, but so were two local policemen. The first he knew of this was when he was felled within feet of his victims' car.
     The police had no statement to make to the press about how the thief came to appear later in the police station with two black eyes and what appeared to be a broken arm. But most such car crime doesn't have such a happy ending.
     Another of my Leaks, a couple of countries away, warns of the Car Rental Scam.
     Here, the presence of gear bags provide a prominent sign that shore-diving is taking place. None of the divers' belongings are stolen, but the car's tools, jack, spare wheel and other portable equipment disappear.
     When the divers return the car to the disreputable rental firm's premises, they get hit for the cost of the missing items, all of which just happen to have been brand-new when the car was issued. Replacement cost demands are huge.
     One of my many Leaks in Florida urges me to stress that divers should always stick to the well-known car-hire companies. One not so reputable outfit in the Caribbean actually damaged the car outside the office while the diver-hirer was inside filling in the paperwork to return it.
     Divers on two wheels should, he says, also beware. With so many so many divers returning hired scooters or mopeds with damage, local lawmen suspect that someone driving around the shore dive-sites is either an exceptionally bad driver, or deliberately hitting two-wheelers.
     The cost of repairs, even for slight damage, is colossal. And divers, intent on catching homeward-bound planes, often have little time to argue. Enjoy paradise, but don't say you haven't been warned of snakes in the grass!

Why dreadful students shouldn't throw things
Ever since students have had to pay for their lessons, I have, you will have noticed, treated them quite gently. After all, it isn't nice for them to have to enter the real world in early life already in debt.
     However, there are limits to my generous kid-glove treatment of these dreadful student divers. One such limit was reached when my Staffordshire Leak, who holds an honours degree from the University of Life, detailed to me the goings-on at St Abbs on the Monday off that the Queen gave us to go diving in celebration of her Golden Jubilee.
     Picture the scene in this little rock-ringed harbour. There is the charter "shuttle" dive-boat. There are the eager divers of some southern university dive club, already swarming aboard before all the previous group's kit has been taken off.
     Here is the excellent skipper of the dive-boat, making sure that all are ashore who are going ashore, with their kit. But what's this? He finds a torch clearly marked with the name "Bob" and passes it up to one of the newly arrived student divers to hand back to its rightful owner, now on his way back to the nearby car park.
     Now whether this lad is in the throes of pre-dive excitement, or whether his mind is still fixated on revision, no one can tell. Whatever the cause, the Dreadful Student tosses the torch towards a RIB-owner who has kindly come to collect it.
     Students of any kind are not good at tossing things from one boat to another and, yes, you guessed it, the torch falls short and sinks out of sight into the silt of ages. Despite the efforts of others on the slip, the torch cannot be found.
     The DS denies that he is on the science side and has any knowledge of the Colin Martin Theory of Trajectories or the Lawson Wood Theory of Torch Buoyancies. Neither apparently have the rest of the students aboard, for they also fail to assist in the hunt for Bob's Beam and leave it to a one-armed diver from Stockton to recover it.
     My Staffordshire Leak suggests that the DS and all the other members of the university present that day should make a handsome donation to the Diver Lifeboat Fund to cover up their shame.
     I agree. Even if this does put them all deeper in debt, I suggest that the matter of Bob's Beam should cost them each a crisp crackly. To me as swiftly as a torch can flash. Or, sadly, I shall have to name names.

Arise, Sir Podgerman
There is a Podgerman! He is alive and living in luxurious retirement on the edge of Dartmoor. In his cottage with its huge but perfectly manicured garden, this once-famous spearfisherman meditates among racks of his lovingly polished creations, which he insists are still known throughout the diving world as "podgers".
     For those who, like Beachcomber, were unaware of these useful items, the "podger" is basically a stainless-steel hand-spear, not more than 10in long. Its L-shape provides a handle, essential for close-in work among flatfish or for luring giant lobsters from their holes.
     A refinement, patented by Podgerman, is a hole in the non-pointed end, through which is passed a short length of nylon cord ending in a small float. This enables a pierced plaice to be threaded along so that it floats above and behind the podger, leaving the weapon clear for more action.
     Some of today's divers may be shocked by the news that these primitive weapons are still available, and that the Axeman (who has still not sent me the fine I levied for his use of an axe to catch lobsters), regards the "podger" as an even more suitable undersea weapon than his axe.
     Podgerman has no shame. Indeed, he offered to sell me several of his creations at what he described as rock-bottom prices. I, of course, made some excuse and left the old Podger to his memories of diving days long gone.