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LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE TALKING
EXCELLENCE OF JOURNALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY ASIDE, DIVER beats the competition in one vitally important area. It smells better than any other diving publication I've ever read.
It hits you the minute you tear off the shrinkwrap: a clean, confident aroma, scientific yet inviting, redolent with suppressed excitement and anticipation. I suggested to Nigel that he change the strapline on the cover to "Britain's Best-Smelling Diving Magazine".
That went down like a bag of porky scratchings in Eilat.
To lighten the mood, I asked if he'd heard of the inflatable diver who smuggled a drawing-pin aboard the club RIB. The DO called him over and said: "Perkins, you've let me down - you've let the Branch down -but worst of all, you've let yourself down." The ensuing silence was like that which greets the Treasurer's Report at a BSAC meeting.
So I feel an obligation this month to resist any attempt at humour. Surviving under water is, after all, a serious business. Particularly in the Maldives where, thanks to global warming, surviving under water is likely to become the status quo.
Shunning all frivolity, facetiousness, fun and other words starting with "f", I propose to explore the issue of Submarine Communication.
I recently returned from Greenland, where the Inuit have 13 words for snow (and 23 for alcohol and 129 for suicide). Yet the current vocabulary available to divers is pitiful. What tools do we have to describe the majesty of a bottomless drop-off, the sinister grace of a tiger shark, the fragile, draughtsmanly perfection of a seahorse?
"Going down... Going up... Stop' Are you OK?... I feel dodgy... I have trouble with my ears." During all my years in the sport, I can recall the introduction of only one new signal. This was the placing of one hand on top of the head. But the opportunities for asserting that one is a tea-pot must be severely limited.
We must devise a more expressive underwater language - if only for the sake of the Maldive islanders, who will soon need to order drinks, renew TV licences and propose marriage without benefit of speech.
Here are a few tentative suggestions about the sort of sentiments that might be addressed with a new, improved sign language:
Is that a new wetsuit or have you turned into a pizza?
How do I get my computer out of Games mode?
My medical has expired. Do you think my insurance is still valid?
What does it mean when you can't breathe any more?
Consider for a moment, if you will, the exquisitely delicate hues of this astoundingly lovely tunicate. Does it not suggest to you that the Universe is, after all, the construct of an omnipotent creator?
What's 100 feet in metres?
And, less commonly: What's 100 metres in feet?
Some subjects immediately suggest suitable hand signals. For instance, waving both hands wildly about while coughing out one's regulator would clearly be the sign for: "Explain to me again the difference between a reef shark and a great white."
Swivelling the head repeatedly from left to right while glancing anxiously at one's contents gauge would signal: "I haven't seen you for 20 minutes. Look, this isn't funny - it's plain bloody childish."
Holding one hand horizontally while simultaneously oscillating it and raising it from the waist to the forehead would signify: "Help. lam a Maldive Islander and while the tide came in this morning as usual, it doesn't appear to be going out."
But any new language requires concensus. Send your own suqqestions for new hand siqnals to me, here at DIVER.
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