BY NOW, THE GRIM REALITY OF A BRITISH JANUARY IS HITTING HOME. Miserable weather, credit card bills and crushingly embarrassing flashbacks to those early hours of New Year's Day, when phoning and texting graphic details of my undying love to anyone not within snogging distance seemed like a top idea.
     Isn't technology great? Even dropping my mobile down the toilet at 4am couldn't prevent me from humiliating myself on an international level. I can only console myself with the thought that all my diving mates were equally bladdered and therefore unlikely to recall my antics.
     The winter months are generally a bit of a disappointment for the UK diver. Even the realisation of our wildest dreams - like 3000 luxury cars sinking in diveable depths in the English Channel - proved a letdown.
     The spoilsport owners leapt into action in less time than it takes to launch the branch RIB, depriving many South Coast divers of the opportunity to leave a selection of BMW parts rotting in their backyards and garden sheds.
     Traditionally, the British diving season kicks off only at Easter (going on July), but that timescale won't satisfy the scuba addicts among us.
     By about midday on 1 January, many of us are mulling over the meaning of life, the universe and everything, while nursing a dull ache in our chest and a swimming head. Surely a sign that we need to go diving!
     The rest of the population would simply swallow a hangover cure, but your hardcore British divers will make for the nearest diveable stretch of waterÉ only to discover in the Stoney Cove car park that their drysuits have mysteriously shrunk a size over Xmas and can no longer accommodate their arses. The frustration!
     Diveboat skippers are well aware of this syndrome and helpfully offer plenty of "winter specials". You can find them listed in the classified ads in Diver and on a special UK dive boat page on Divernet.
     These cut-price offers appear totally above board. You convince yourself that it would be fabulous to get in some early dives, so that you're really dive-fit for the season ahead.
     The reality is somewhat different. "I can't guarantee where you'll go diving - it's weather-dependent," says the skipper. What he actually means is: you'll all turn up and load your kit on the boat. The weather will be complete bobbins (as expected) so we'll all agree to go to the pub for the time being, to see if it clears up."
     Several tall diving tales and a quantity of alcohol later, you'll realise that it's now Sunday night. But you'll certainly feel as if you've been diving. Just don't get too carried away with the fantasy, because when you arrive at your next dive, your drysuit still won't fit over your arse.
     You can defy many things but, as Scottie constantly tells Captain Kirk, the laws of physics isn't one of them. Thank heaven for stretch neoprene.
     Just when I thought I'd got away with my seasonal excesses, I boarded the boat to find that one of the divers was hiding in the toilet.
     "What's come over him?" I asked the skipper.
     "Well, after you sent him that text at New Year saying you fantasise about him dressed in his woolly bear, he's come over a bit coy."
     Bugger. At times like this, all I can do is smile, put it all behind me - where there's plenty of scope for concealment - and resolve to concentrate on the really important things in life.
     I recently read an interview with Sue Townsend, the author of Adrian Mole. She was quoted as saying that the important things in life are love, sex, death and the avoidance of humiliation. For me it would be love, sex, diving and stretch neoprene. Because as far as I'm concerned, death and humiliation are inevitable. But then, I am a rebreather diver.