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TO WEE OR NOT TO WEE
FOR THOSE OF YOU OF A DELICATE DISPOSITION, I suggest you stop reading now. In fact, I suggest you stop diving. Let's be brutally honest, this is not the sport for shrinking violets.
I comforted myself with this thought after opening the toilet door on a hardboat and walking in on one of my dive buddies. Giggling with embarrassment would have been my first reaction, but laughing at a man holding his assets is the height of bad manners (and potentially dangerous). So I retreated hastily and stuck my head in the freshwater soak tub. By strange coincidence, the shade of the red plastic tub perfectly matched the colour of my face.
The luxury of having access to a toilet on a dive trip is a mixed blessing. Just as people who travel will regale you with their experiences of disgusting toilets from around the world, divers will have a hundred stories about the idiosyncrasies of the head.
On Egyptian dive boats, I invariably go into the toilet to change, and then discover that the bucket used for flushing is empty. Barefoot and struggling into my swimsuit, I go to fill the bucket.
At this point, an excessively sun-tanned Dutch bloke in a lime-green thong will occupy the head, leaving me holding the bucket and hopping from foot to foot. And praying that the pair of knickers I have left beside the sink will still be there.
In Turkey, I dived off a fishing boat with a toilet like those on a French motorway Ð a hole, with two footpads for squatting. Closing the rusty door meant shutting myself in with the smell.
Scarier still was the sound of the Black Sea slopping around beneath me as I crouched, trying to hold my undersuit clear.
At the critical moment, a roll of the boat made the door fly open, giving me a fabulously uninterrupted view of nearby shipping.
The closest boat was that of the Turkish Coastguard, which was checking us out, and videoing the proceedings. I waved.
In the UK, offshore 105s are popular dive boats. The head is usually in a tiny forward cabin beside the skipper's chair. A flimsy pair of shutters is all that protects me as I sit, woolly bear around my ankles, clinging to the sides of the cabin to avoid being pitched into the wheelhouse.
Getting redressed is tricky. I once bent down and my bum knocked the shutters open. I would have escaped general notice had the skipper not dropped a mug of tea into his lap at the sight of my M&S thermals.
The scariest heads come with a huge list of dos and donts. Reclaimed from steamships, they require serious elbow-power and a degree in engineering to operate. Jamming the mechanism incurs the wrath of the skipper, who has also been reclaimed from an earlier era and will keelhaul the culprit. It's enough to terrify you into not bothering.
I have never seen a RIB with a toilet. The ability to hang your bare bottom over the tubes while carrying on a spirited conversation with the boat-handler is truly the mark of a seasoned UK diver. Wear your complete shamelessness with pride!
Occasionally, people ask me if it's OK to wee in a wetsuit. And I am shocked. Can there really be people who don't wee in their wetsuit?
For me, the decision is whether to wee at the coldest, deepest point of the dive, or save it for the deco stop.
On a recent expedition where long dives in drysuits were required, adult nappies proved a popular option. One bloke was so enamoured of the experience that he refused to remove his nappy until it disintegrated off him the following evening.
Which conclusively proves that, just when you thought the tone couldn't be lowered any further, a diver will always do the honours.
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