Word Of Mouse

so, here I am, having survived not only my final PADI pool session but my last too dives as well. Malc was quite polite, but on Friday the whole thing felt like an ordeal, some nasty endurance test. I was terrified about having to rip my mask off my head at 18 metres and I think teh only thing that got me down was the respite being under water would offer from sea sickness. I was quite cheesed off at the end of the day. My complete inability to cope with boat travel was spotted early in teh day and I gratefully took up the advice of staying in teh sea while we waited for other divers to return, it was cold which seemed to bother some people, but they were the ones who didn´t feel sick. I wouldn´t have cared if I had frost bite.
Anyway, inspite of this precaution I still managed to throw up. At least it wasn´t on teh over-crowded boat in full view of the other 20 people crammed on it.

I think at this point Malc feared I´d ditch teh whole thing. I certainly felt like it, but I couldn´t have faced teh sense of failure so decided at least to see teh course thropugh. I was glad to realise we had a second pool session and took teh chance to practicethe things that scared me most. having chocked and recovered underwater (not something I intended to practice) I started to feel more confident.

Yesterday armed with some portuguese drugs called Vom I braved the boat again and got in teh water for dives three and four. The first dive of teh day was decidedly uninteresting, there was not much at all to see adn I spent quite a lot of effort avoiding teh fins of a fellow novice who spent his entire time flailing arms and legs. I thought again how grateful my training had been done with a dive budddy who was clam and relaxed and had an intelligent repsect for the possible dangers of diving. Miklos, the Hungarian doctor, with a Belfast lilt in his accent on account of teh last year´s working there, also got teh theory quickly so we learned it all at home which made teh tedious classroom sessions shorter.

Dive four however was finally what I thought diving might be about - floating weightlessly among fish and interesting underwater things. Perhaps I might get a taste for it afterall. I´m not that got on marine identification yet, but among other things we saw a trigger fish, loads of baby damsel fish, nudibranch (yellow and blue sluggy things with funny spouty things coming out the top), wrasse and lots of other stuff. I got quite excited about a sea cucumber but got told they were boring ugly and commonplace. Maybe my tastes aren´t conventional.

I found teh boat bearable too, though I´ll not be rushing out to get on another. My next dive is a shore dive! Still, we met some good people and spent an enjoyable evening having a meal with them. In retrospect perhps the whole thing was alright afterall.