You have done more than 300 warmwater dives. Having gained your Divemaster qualification and endured an initiation ceremony involving a snorkel and large quantities of alcohol, you are now a PADI god. What next?
     You had vowed never to dive in British waters. They were cold and murky and contained negligible life.
     BSAC divers were either held in awe because of their reputation for beer swilling and habitual use of the forbidden demonic decompression tables, or they were dismissed as a lunatic fringe.
     Perhaps you are now suffering from an inferiority complex. You decide to break your vow. You experience all the initial euphoria of a veggie converting to veganism or a skier going off-piste.
     You introduce yourself to a small local club. But it tends to dive mainly in the siltiness between Redcar and Bridlington.
     So you arrive at a larger club that is 90 minutes away but has a magnificent website. This promises regular diving with seals in the clear water around the Farnes.
     It also has two RIBs, two compressors and a host of tekkies. You can learn a lot here. In April you sign on the dotted line.
     You visit a dive shop and the assistant helps you to struggle in and out of a neoprene drysuit. You painfully lose a percentage of your rather elaborate beard in the folds of the neck-seal.
     Back home, you decide to practise the donning and removal of your purchase in a more dignified manner. It goes on very professionally but refuses to come off.
     At every attempt you can get your head only part way out before you begin to suffocate. Half an hour later, the heat is unbearable and your wife won't be home for at least three hours.
     Stop. Breathe. Think. Act.
     You are about to pour cold water into the suit when there is a knock at the door. You open it and the jaw of the electricity meter reader drops. You are dressed from head to toe in rubber and are in the throes of heat exhaustion. You try to appear as nonchalant as possible.
     He cheerfully agrees to help you out of your dilemma. When he is gone, you imagine the tale of sexual perversity he will tell in the pub that night.
     It isn't until early July that you get your first supervised drysuit practice in Ellerton Lake. You follow the lines through the jungle of vegetation from one sunken vehicle to another.
     Instructor Ian deliberately leads you into your very first near-zero viz and you feel no sense of panic or even uneasiness.
     So that was a great success. Well, almost. In your haste to kit up as quickly as possible, you had forgotten to turn in your neoprene neck-seal. Your top half is very wet but you are contented.
     It takes until late July to get into the North Sea. At long last you are off to the Farne Islands.
     The first dive is Joe's Reef, chosen because of its lack of currents and easy-to-follow wall. The soft coral is far more spectacular than you expected and the urchins are there in their thousands.
     When they are wafted by a diver's fin some are dislodged and float gracefully to the bottom to land the right way up.
     It's a brilliant experience but depression creeps in as more weeks crawl by and nothing else appears to be happening for inexperienced you. You don't understand when it is explained that your main problem is not having a regular buddy.
     A two-day trip is mentioned but it won't be until September. You cannot dismiss the thought that the main purpose of your £50 club subscription is to subsidise the frequent diving of the upper echelons of a tekkie clique.
     Enough of being passive. You find a buddy from an Internet forum and cross the Pennines to Capernwray. You have a very entertaining day discovering gnomes, helicopters and race-horses, but it is not the sea.
     You take yourself back to the small local club. You are invited to dive the UC70 and eagerly scribble your name on the beermat that is passed around.
     You are so enthused that you decide to sacrifice at least an inch off your beard to lessen the drysuit removal problems. Three days later, the telephone rings.
     The dive is off. You feel all the angst of a lovesick youth whose date didn't turn up.
     However, you are soon at Bridlington waiting to go out to the wreck of the Biesbosch. You put your gear on the RIB and realise that your hood is missing.
     You had been determined to make a good impression but now must humble yourself by reporting your foolishness to the DO.
     He is organising a replacement when a thought strikes you. Yes, that tight feeling on your left calf is indeed caused by the hood inside your drysuit.
     On the dive, the visibility is poor and the current strong but there are critters in profusion, including two cod hiding among the twisted metal of the wreckage.
     And there is more to come. Next week you will be diving HMS Falmouth. Then you hope finally to come to grips with the elusive UC70.