THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I COULDN'T HAVE CARED less about the weather. When you live in a city, it makes little odds what the weather decides to do; the worst that can happen is that your Gucci sandals get a soaking or your hair gets dishevelled. Either way, you can usually pass it off as a fashion statement.
     But then you go diving. And having trekked to the coast with all your kit, paid for B&B and got up at 6am to catch the tide, you suddenly discover that the weather has other plans.
     Wind strength and direction now rule your world. Your fate is in the hands of an old bloke in an oil-rag cardigan and rigger boots pondering on whether he can be arsed to find you a suitably sheltered dive site.
     Starbucks it ain't.
     Maybe that's a good thing. If, like me, you're used to getting what you want, when you want (as long as you can pay), it's a shock to be stopped in your tracks by the forces of nature. The gold credit card is not all-powerful - ouch! - dodge that falling masonry as the temple collapses around your ears. There's nothing like a dive trip to shatter false gods.
     But while massive weather systems and huge seas can overpower the efforts of any diver, most of our diving ambitions can be toppled by the smallest of objects. It takes only the catch on your weightbelt to break, or the connector on your BC inflator to get mangled, and it can screw up your dive. Too much fabric under your dump valve, a clump of hair in your neckseal - all recipes for drysuit diving disasters.
     Just a kink in that tiny, insignificant O-ring, and it's Jacuzzi time on the shotline. It serves as a timely reminder that these small items effectively allow us to defy the laws of physics and go diving in the first place.
     With so many potentially dive-threatening details to take care of, you could be fooled into believing that divers must have the temperament of a chartered accountant: fastidious, methodicalÉ anal.
     But apart from the usual fixation with bottoms, most divers are the opposite. If we didn't delight in coping with whatever gets thrown at us and rise to the challenge of handling those inevitable glitches without throwing a hissy fit, it's doubtful whether we would ever get off the boat.
     Nowhere was this more apparent than on my recent trip to Scapa Flow. In this heartland of rufty-tuftyness, there were divers so laid back that they had barely noticed that the boat they had chartered had no crew. They simply donned aprons in the galley, manned the compressor, and took turns in the wheelhouse to dodge the tankers while the skipper was Òhaving a little lie-downÓ.
     Even these optimists were forced to abandon their diving when Force 7 winds blasted the islands. Luckily Stromness is a fantastic place: plenty of history, character and pubs full of divers on the lash.
     If you're a girl facing the disappointment of a cancelled dive, you can retreat to the Ferry Inn and console yourself with stacks of Smirnoff Ice and boundless opportunities for flirtation.
     I was just getting pally with divers from the Manchester Armed Robbery Squad, when a bloke wandered over and told me that I was undoubtedly the most gorgeous woman he'd ever seen. Shortly before falling flat on his face.
     When I left the bar an hour or so later he was still prone, and appeared to be using the same chat-up line on an empty fag packet.
     For me, this summed up the UK diving experience: winds and tides rule our days, alcohol - and gravity - dominate our nights.
     And the minute you might be in danger of getting too big for your boots, those same forces of nature (together with the occasional empty fag packet ) will simply blow your illusions away.