THERE'S SOMETHING INTRIGUING ABOUT WATCHING THE TENNIS-PLAYERS at Wimbledon serve. Each one seems to perform a repetitive little dance; ball-bouncing, foot-shuffling, positioning head and body as the ball is thrown up, and... wallop! Watch individual players. All have an exact routine: a ritual to help optimise their serve.
     I was reminded of this ritualistic behaviour when I managed to clip myself into a large quantity of kit and then discovered that I'd left my computer in the gear-gulper under my seat. Doh!
     No amount of whimpering and leg-thrashing could engage the sympathy of my fellow-divers, so I had to de-kit, grab my computer and start again. As soon as I was free of my kit, I decided that it would be a great idea to revisit the toilet, which meant unzipping the drysuit...
     Having a kitting-up routine helps you avoid these moments of frustration and - let's be honest - potential humiliation (because it is usually in that brief moment of clarity when you launch yourself off the boat that you remember that your drysuit zip is still undone).
     And then your dive is effectively over, bar the screaming. Either with shock (you) or with raucous laughter (everybody else).
     The more complicated your equipment, the greater the need for some kind of standard procedure to make sure everything is attached and turned on in the correct order. The good old buddy check: "Buoyancy, Air, Re... damn! Forgot my weightbelt" has saved many a diver's blushes. So it seems bizarre that the people least likely to carry out a buddy check are the more experienced divers with the most complicated dive kit.
     Why is that? Does experience make divers infallible? Or just too arrogant to follow the rules?
     With club dives it's often a case of one rule for the trainees and another for the more experienced. What could bring greater joy to a club diver than the sight of a lardy Diving Officer being unceremoniously manhandled back onto the branch RIB, having forgotten something as basic as lead? Pride comes before a maul.
     Diving offers ample opportunities to embarrass yourself and endanger your safety, so rules and procedures can seem like a great idea.
     Never slow to miss a gap in the market, the Americans have published the definitive manual on a franchise basis. The PADI "system" is designed to keep divers safe by setting down clear rules and procedures which must be followed. This takes the need for thinking and decision-making out of the equation. Looking at the likes of George W Bush, you can appreciate why the Americans saw this as a bonus.
     The US-based Hogarthian system is a set of diving principles which have been seized upon as rules by people such as Doing It Right. Details such as the brand of your drysuit, the quality of rubber on your cylinder knob, and the length of hose on your contents gauge are all prescribed.
     When assembled, the DIR mob may look like an out-take from Attack of the Clones, but at least they know each other's knobs inside out.
     For people who follow these systems it must be comforting to know that very experienced divers have sat down and come up with the best possible procedures for safe and effective diving.
     So when I see PADI divers catching their mask-fixed snorkels on the shotline, or DIR divers swimming lopsidedly with both stage cylinders clipped to their left-hand side, I know I should be filled with admiration. Unfortunately I'm usually filled with the urge to chortle and mock.
     Ironic perhaps, that all the thought and analysis about diving has resulted in unquestioning obedience to the rules. Systems have their uses, but when I jump off the boat the item on which I most rely is highly unpredictable and the least standardised of all: my brain. Scary!