Interesting Times

It has been an interesting week.

Work is manic at the moment, what with all these couples having marital terminations as a result of the Feb half term. Yes I am serious, divorces peak every time the kids are on holiday. Plus there’s the annual Legal Services Commission Annual review that’s due at the end of March.
Monday night saw my Sports Diver Theory Test. Passed 100%, but due to BSAC snail type timescale, I’m still diving as a PADI Advanced until the water approaches bath temperature…

On Wednesday we went to Yeung’s – the Chinese buffet restaurant in Ashford recommended by the taxi driver last week, which was very nice and very very reasonable.

Chris’ birthday was on Thursday, and being the kind and big-hearted person I am, I let him get his toys out to play with, in order to install my new washing machine. Which I also let him stay at my house for the morning to be there when the delivery men arrived. Generous, ain’t I?
Friday we joined the parental units in exploring the wilds of Sandwich in the hopes of discovering the ancient Mayan templ… er, sorry wrong monologue. With Chris as our guide, we hacked our way through creative parking and over vicious cobblestone roads to find the infamous No. 6, to which Chris has been before. We were met by the delectable Mark. Now you know when you see a guy who’s been poured into a pair of jeans, or they’ve been spray painted on that it’s an absolute guarantee that they’re gay? We are talking serious spray paint with washboard stomach. The black PVC thigh boots with four inch stilettos were a bit of a giveaway too. However, I am exceptionally jealous of the ease in which Mark managed to walk in said stilettos over slip slidey tile flooring. The karaoke style cabaret was out there, and the food simply divine. It was also interesting observing fiancé, mother and father from the point of view of sober driving person (which makes a change that person to be me I’m told.).

Moving swiftly on, someone had the brilliant idea of putting me on a course yesterday (Saturday), which involved me getting up at 0630. Okay, yes it was my idea, but I just don’t DO mornings. So, got up and dressed and caffeined and fed kits, leaving other half to feed fiskies and roll out of bed at lunchtime. At 0700m sat in car and failed to work out how to work the Sat Nav. With Chris remote help; him in bed, and me ten yards away in car (mobile phones are a wonderful invention), got that working and set off. One and a half hours later in the zone of no service stations, caffeine wanted out. Found a convenient hill from which to spot lurking Little Chefs and took a little detour. Arrived Selsey (near Chichester) at 9am, very impressed with nice weather and little traffic. Went into the dive centre which was the allotted meeting point to find very nice young lady dishing out large top ups of caffeine.
At 9.30 we were led to the Church Hall for the start of lectures. The course itself was run by the BDMLR (British Divers Marine Life Rescue). No food or drink was allowed in the Hall, so like true divers, we waited patiently for everyone to arrive and the doors to close before shedding overcoats and pulling caffeine and sausage rolls for a working breakfast. We then proceeded to have three hours of lectures on the processes, procedures and avoidance of being thrown into walls by over-excited whales. Very important, this last point, particularly for the boys. No straddling whale tails.

At 1.30 we were given strict instructions to go get lunch, get to the beach half a mile down the road, get kitted up into our dry suits and be on the beach by 2pm. Noteably, the divers among us saw absolutely no problem with this timescale and were to be found at 2pm on the beach, fully kitted and munching down on sausage rolls. Again. The non-divers were still in the toilet block searching for the sausage rolls that had fallen into the legs of their drysuits and trying figure out which hole their head was supposed to go through.
With a bit of teamwork we were all ready to go at five past. We split into three groups, and while the two groups went to rescue Dummy Dolphin and Dummy Whale, our group stood around bemoaning the fact that there seemed to be a spot of light drizzle and the sea was looking a bit grey. We were then presented with Dummy Seal Dum, and Dummy Seal Dummer, and were taught how sneak up on them with a teatowel and pounce. The thing is with seals, is that they were greased up sumo wrestlers in their previous life and they haven’t forgotten it. So we did a lot of practising of the pouncing technique. Interestingly, there was not one single person that volunteered to take it’s temperature. Even on a water filled plastic Seal, the concept of the rectal thermometer was too scary. After mastering the Seals we were all very proud of ourselves, right up to the point where the instructors said, ‘Now that you’ve mastered Seal pups, we’ll talk about the adults…’ What the-??! For the adults, apparently, nothing less than a JCB will do.
Next, lessons in Dolphins and Porpoises. Marvellous creatures. Unlike Seals, once they’re out of the water they’re not inclined to either bite or throw you into walls. Just don’t have your face over it’s blowhole when it sneezes. We got our Dolphin into the water magnificently. We observed the two foot waves and the fact that our heads were as wet as our feet due to the increase in rain, and proceeded to draw a crowd with our attempts to get the Dolphin out of the water and back on the beach so that the group could try and refloat it. The team made an executive decision that if the next group wanted to play with it, they could fish it out themselves. Unfortunately the instructor overruled us. We contemplated revolt, but he threatened to take the sausage rolls away. So with much entertainment to the congregating masses, we pulled Dolphin out of water. The congregating masses stubbed out his cigarette and buggered off with his dog down the pub.

So next we stood around balefully eyeing up the big yellow pontoon which we had to use to refloat the whale. We eyed up the torrential rain, and the fact that sea and sky were so grey we couldn’t tell where the sea end and the sky began. We got our whale length measuring tape measures out and estimated height of waves to be around twenty feet and debated the practicalities of using whale as a surfboard. We refloated whale mostly, but the instructors decided it was too dangerous to continue when the tallest member of our team (6ft 5ish) became too short to stand in the surf and hold whale. We think the whale may have sat on the shortest member of our team and we waved hot sausage rolls at the tail end of the whale and she found her way back out.

By this time it was around 4.30 and we had strict instructions to be changed back into civvies and be back at the church hall for 5pm. All the non-divers could be found at five pm sitting the church hall waiting for the debriefing to begin. All the divers, with their unerring sense of…. Diving tradition … had found their way to the nearest place that supplied hot tea and refused to do anything more until tea was in mitts. Unfortunately, tea girl was the slowest teagirl in the universe. Her average time to make a single cup of tea was ten minutes. And it was lukewarm. We carefully smuggled tea into church hall, and had de-brief. Am now fully fledged, if entirely inexperienced Marine Mammal Medic, and can fully expect to be called down to Shakespeare Beach at 2am on a regular basis to rescue Seals that don’t actually need rescuing because such beaches are the Seal equivalent of the Clackett Lane Services; they've just stopped for a good itch and a fart, and then they'll be on their way around the Marine M25 aka The Channel.
The drive back took three hours, with many accidents, roadworks, vast amount of traffic and torrential rain.
But it was an excellent day.
Off to London today.