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I CAN BEHAVE AS BADLY AS ANYONE
"Did you see much marine life?" asked a curious onlooker as I emerged from the bay and crawled elegantly over a patch of stinking green slime.
"Not really," I said, spitting out my reg. "I was in a cave most of the time."
"Oh well, never mind," he said, smiling sympathetically. Fool!
For some bizarre reason, non-divers seem to labour under the belief that diving is some kind of fish-spotting exercise. Little do they realise that the pleasures of being a diver are far more subtle and satisfying.
Diving is the perfect excuse for seriously bad behaviour. Forget the seven deadly sins; you can indulge yourself in far greater wickedness.
Sectarianism: The cause of so much war, genocide and misery is alive and well in the world of diving! Just innocently ask whether PADI divers are better than BSAC divers, stand well back, and watch people tear chunks out of each other. Alternatively try tekkies v sport divers, tekkies v rival groups of tekkies, British divers v the rest of the world...
Little Hitlerism: Hell hath no fury like a dive leader clutching a clipboard. If you feel you lack authority and respect in your everyday life, diving has the solution. You too can have the opportunity to boss, belittle, and vent your spleen at the less experienced - and all the while insisting that you're doing them a huge favour.
Kit avarice: Once a diver has purchased the essential items of dive equipment, most of us keep right on shopping. You can pretend that buying the latest model of computer gives you redundancy. You can convince yourself that you simply won't see a thing at 30m without a sexy new HID light, but we all know it's plain old gadget-lust.
Egomania: A piece of research turned up in the office, comparing the personalities of sports divers to those of Navy divers. Basically it found that there are egos, super-egos and diving egos. Nobody can give it the big "I am" like a diver. And the research was carried out "before" the divers got to the pub...
Drunkenness & debauchery: A dive weekend - what better excuse for a binge! Most of us do like to go diving first, but it's by no means compulsory - ask any skipper about his "special winter dive breaks". The divers arrive, they might even load their kit onto the boat, but as it's rather cold, and the weather is - inevitably - a bit marginal, they retreat to the nearest bar... only to re-emerge late on Sunday night.
Many of the divers who claim that they don't experience nitrogen narcosis are telling you the truth; their blood-alcohol level is so high that a bit of nitrogen makes absolutely no odds.
Before this begins to sound a bit holier-than-thou, I must thank whoever caught me after I fell off the table in that Maltese bar, while giving a spirited rendition of New York, New York. I feel obliged to share this with you, because I know that if I don't, someone else surely will.
Spitefulness: I can't think of any other sport where people are so vicious and vindictive towards each other. Any divers unfortunate enough to be involved in a diving accident will find themselves denounced as numpties before the helicopter has even landed.
Should you die while diving, your friends and family will be subjected to the gloating of complete strangers - self-appointed diving pundits who will rejoice in your demise because you failed to dive according to their particular standards.
So when I was recently condemned by the church as "lacking in humility", I was a tad annoyed. How pathetic! Divers worth their salt will be guilty of more and far greater sins. I must try harder.
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