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SWEET LIKE CHOCOLATE
LOUISE TREWAVAS
DO YOU LOVE DIVING? WANT TO DIVE IN THE UK? Do you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit? Join our club!
There's nothing like an iconic ad slogan to bring on a bout of nostalgia. Ah, those Jacob's Club biscuit bars, they're just not what they used to be... And dive clubs? If they were as easy to sell to us as chocolate biscuits, British diving would be booming.
The joy of dive clubs is largely hidden - perhaps because diving journalists are keener to describe fish than explore the human side of diving. Not me! I've always been happy to share my club-diving adventures, and I have the complaining letters to prove it.
Bizarrely, not everyone in the British Sub-Aqua Club has appreciated my frank approach to the highs and lows of my club-diving experiences, but perhaps they have come to realise that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Well they're paying the page rate to get a mention now!
In reality, I'm a huge fan of British diving and dive clubs. I dedicate stupid amounts of time and money to both; actions that should speak far louder than any of the words in this column. But don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.
To me, the beauty of dive clubs is that they show that there is so much more to diving than the kit you use or the sights you see, more than the sum total of photos in your camera.
The experience of diving is best enjoyed when shared, and who better to share it with than a group of fellow-enthusiasts? Sweet.
Even dedicated solo-style divers such as tekkies or underwater photographers need an audience to brag to about what depth they reached, what spidge they recovered, or to show off those fabulous shots. Frankly, divers get bored of this behaviour a lot less quickly than your long-suffering work colleagues, or the people stuck in the queue at the bus stop.
The tricky part is that people are complex and unpredictable. Their relationships are fraught with little power struggles, jealousies and intrigues: how could reality TV be so compelling if it weren't so?
Joining a dive club is like becoming part of a family group or a mini-community: you have to find your place, your role - and feel happy with it. The Emerald City beckons, and while you had imagined yourself as Dorothy, in the world of dive clubs you're more likely to end up as a munchkin or a flying monkey. You have to work your way up to centre stage.
That's why PADI pay-as-you-go dive clubs have largely failed: the lead character is fixed, and the paying customers won't stand for munchkin status.
So I had to laugh at the point in BSAC's "Go!Dive" advert when it promised to put you in touch with your local dive club "and they'll take you diving". A tad economical with the truth! Most dive clubs will look you over (Threat? Potential shag? Psycho-munchkin?), hum and hah about your qualifications and expect you to buy a round - way before you get near to actually going diving with them.
If people can be strange, groups or clubs of people can be exponentially stranger. As Nietsche would have it: "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups it is the rule." You have to find a club displaying a brand of insanity you can enjoy, and join!
The Monty Python team claimed: "There's nothing Nietsche couldn't teach ya." But then again, perhaps there's also a valuable lesson that Nietsche could have learned from Jacob's biscuits.
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