Fish and food

It’s been ages since my last missive, and having just dot pointed everything I want to get in, I’ve realised that anyone who has the time and/or the patience to read this might want to either get a very large glass of something nice and put their feet up for a while, or just skip to the end to find out which characters live to see another episode.

There's a lot to cover and I've missed loads, but i think the salient points are covered.

Let me introduce Leo. He is one of my very first original fish. A leopard spotted Danio. Who had a swim bladder infection in August and has since been swimming at a funny angle. Unfortunately Leo had a relapse in December and has been swimming upside down and slowly losing weight. As of the 22nd December, he was so thin and so desperately trying to stay away from the surface, it was clear that he had only hours to live. *sniff*.

On 23rd December we went diving; or rather, Chris dived and I gossiped with Buoyancy Ade on the side of the lake, ignoring those in the water. I hate colds.

Chris and I had our Christmas on Christmas Eve. And in case anyone mistook either of us for grown up adult types, we were happy as kids in a toy store; Chris with his shiny new fully working replica Darth Vader’s light sabre, and me with my totally unexpected shiny new PSP with some games to start me off. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire immediately loaded. Then we went to Chris’ parents.

Christmas was a fun affair with family popping in and out, pressies swapped and vast quantities of food and alcohol consumed. Harry and I were very happy. Of note, was a musical fish given to Chris by his brother. You have to feed it sound, and it’ll sing and dance, and if you’ve made it really happy, it’ll make noises like its blowing bubbles.

We came back to Ashford on Boxing Day to find cats armed with dirty looks and Leo still swimming hard. Also discovered that we’d left musical fish behind.

You just know there has to be a dive story in here somewhere, don’t you? Well, we decided it would be a really good idea to do a night dive on the evening of 27th December in the lake. Six degree water, not a problem in a dry suit, although my fingers nearly dropped off with the cold. Slightly shocking was the decent down the shot line as we landed on top of the worlds largest pike. It seemed a bit PO’d at us disturbing its night time wanderings, scowled and moved off into the dark. Maybe we’re ‘Ard, jumping in six degree water, maybe we’re crazy and the three degree air temperature might support that, or maybe, according to some people, we’re just wimps because we should have gone in without a suit at all. Crazy, maybe, but not insane!

Decided to take Ghostie to the car wash the following day. A treat as we don’t normally touch them, preferring the bucket and sponge method. After collecting my voucher, it was only when I’d finally located the end of the queue, half way down the block, that I realised I was in for a wait of the best part of an hour. Fortunately at some point my PSP had fallen into my handbag (still don’t understand how that happened), and Harry and I whiled away the time happily together. Slightly concerned when Ghostie took two tries to start afterwards – she has *always* started first time.

On the 29th we had a dive club dinner. Large quantities of Chinese food and alcohol were consumed. With over a dozen of us, we asked the Maitre D’ if he’d organise a selection of each course rather than us selecting, and he truly outdid himself, supplying items that were unpronounceable in the English translation, let alone the Mandarin or anything else, and it was lovely and a good laugh.

New Year was a fun affair at Annelies and Richard’s house with family, pressies swapped and vast quantities of excellent food and alcohol consumed. Harry and I were very happy. We returned home on new years day to find grump cats and Leo still fighting onwards. (Hey, it’s my monologue and I can cheat if I want to!)

The weekend of the sixth of January was one of my girly weekends. More pressies, alcohol, food were consumed, along with the avid reviewing relevant DVD’s as usual. Chris’ fish tank blew up with no survivors.

Some of you may be aware that Ashford is having its one way ring road converted into a two way erm… something or other. The big picture may or may not have been planned properly. The roadworks, really haven’t. Most roadwork types tend to shut off bare minimum of lanes, especially during the rush hour. Junction 10 for example has most of it work done at night. The town centre roadworks however, seem to think it’s a really fun idea to close three out of four lanes for no particular reason, and on all the five different lane merging points (on what amounts to a mile of actual road) the signs that inform drivers of the impending lane merge are strategically placed at the er… actual point of merging; nothing like advance warning or anything… *blink*

With Annelies’ wedding just four weeks away, on the weekend of the 13th January, I went to meet Annelies in Sandhurst for our dress fittings, and also met the other two bridesmaids, Emma and Clo. Without giving anything away, we all looked totally gorgeous. It was good fun, and whilst Annelies was detouring to organise various bits, Emma asked the question, what were we going to do on the hen night that Annelies doesn’t know about. A survival kit was decided upon, so much plotting occurred over that weekend and the following week, roping in the other seventeen ladies going on the hen night in on it. Which is why I now have half her friends on speed dial *whistles innocently*.

I returned home and Leo was fighting ever onwards, but with a now concave stomach, and reduced to thrashing to keep himself off the surface, only minutes, much less hours were left. Sadly, Chris’ uncle Dave passed away after a long illness over the weekend.

On Monday 15th January, I went to the Dive Club to take the first of three lectures I need before I can take the Dive Leader Theory Exam. With five of us on the course, all seasoned divers and one being the club chairman, a, uh, light-hearted approach was taken. I laughed so hard I had a stitch for two days.

On Tuesday Mel came around, and as usual, my worldview expanded in directions I never even suspected existed. Less said, better.

On Wednesday, I got a letter advising me it was upgrade time on my mobile. Got shiny new toy that they gave me sixty quid to take off their hands. The down side is that it’s a Motorola and I’ve always had Nokias. Which means that all the buttons are in the wrong places. And the calendar reminders all go off at midnight. *funk* Oh, and you know how some people just *have* to have new gadgets? So it was no surprise that when I got my new toy, someone else was forced to go out and get a new toy too…

On the weekend of the 20th January, we drove across the country to somewhere outside Oxford for Annelies’ hen party. A gorgeous little old village in the middle nowhere that was extremely quiet and quaint. Chris dropped me off before driving on to meet up with Richard and dad for the stag party. After a small amount of fortification, once us girls had mostly arrived, we went for a short walk before retiring to our rooms to change. We had one hour to change. Yeah. That worked very well. Apart from the bit where on the five mile walk from reception to the room that mum and I had, I was accosted very many times as various ladies kidnapped me at various points to stuff various contributions to the survival kit down my jeans, up my t-shirt, inside my sleeves and... well.

I was lucky I could walk, and rattled so much I just knew I was going to bump into Annelies halfway there. Fortunately I didn’t. Unfortunately, mother had lost me on one of the occasions when I was temporarily kidnapped, and I had to head back to reception to meet up with her. At six o’clock, mum sailed off in a gorgeous swathe of turquoise, whilst I waited for everyone to go over to the pub where we were meeting up before tottering over to reception in my six inch spikes and micro-dress carrying a large wooden box filled with goodies. By myself. And did I mention the five mile walk to reception?

The evening was fantastic. The murder/mystery was convoluted, the thought processes well oiled with good food and alcohol (can you detect a repeating pattern here?). Graham, the host was fantastic, there enough to guide us, but not too intrusive. Sally made an excellent foil for mum, as well as a very attractive corpse. Mum was in her element, and Annelies was… very fishy. The box was presented at the end, and the best bit for us watching? That Annelies didn’t know about it. After much gossiping and retiring to the hotel bar for a night cap, we all staggered to bed some time around 3am. I brought earplugs to guard against mum’s snoring, but either I was too drunk, or she was to snuggled in her cocoon, but I forgot to use them, and didn’t get woken up by snoring. A superb time was had by all.

On Sunday, after the boys had woken with hangovers and decided that the logistics of manoeuvring one car out of the fleet parked on Annelies and Richard’s driveway were just too much for fragile hangovers to handle, us (apparently) more robust ladies decided to drive to them. And from there we extricated the car and went back to Ashford. We found the cats giving us the stiff tailed salute and Leo unable to leave the surface, but he was refusing to give up.

On the Monday, I woke up and jumped in the car to go to work, taking her in the whole two miles because I was going straight up to Chatham after work. Click click click, and I discovered her battery was dead as a dodo. Which explained the occasional difficulty in starting. Planned to fix at the weekend. Fortunately Chris was able to pick me up and take me up to the dive club to attend the second dive leader lecture. It transpired that there were only two of us that hadn’t done it. Light-hearted attitude was taken to whole new levels.

Chris snores horridly when he has a cold, He had one. So I tried out my super duper new wax earplugs. I truly think I may have discovered the cure to the insomnia I’ve had for many years. *bliss*

Tuesday was the day of Uncle Dave’s funeral. It was in Milton Keynes and we went via Hillingdon to consolidate cars with the rest of Chris’ immediate family and pick up the musical fish. The journey up was good, and we stopped at a service station for a quick dash to get dodgy stodgy food as we thought it was the only chance we were going to have – the nibbles being provided after the funeral being assumed to be peanuts crisps and pretzels. The service was simple and concise yet managed to convey that Dave was a real character.

Having the congregation sing the Beatles’ ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ was class. The wake was lively and well attended, and the ‘nibbles’ turned out to be the most gorgeous lasagne, en croute, new potatoes, salads, hams and cheeses, trifles, cheesecakes and strudels. Next time someone says they will provide nibbles, I’m going to take the chance of starving. The journey back was interesting and made up for the several trouble free trips we’ve had recently.

The A5 achieved a maximum speed of thirty mph, the M1 managed forty-five at most, which was all a little frustrating, but okay because at least we were moving. However the M26 managed to take the biscuit when we parked up in the outside lane for half an hour. It was during the quiet at this point that we heard the merry sounds of the fish singing and blowing bubbles. In the boot.

We returned to find Leo still soldiering on. And that the first of two Miners Lamps that we are acquiring in remembrance of Great-Granddad Robinson arrived.

They say as one gets older, one becomes more like one of ones parents. For some reason, since the New Year, I have written four stroppy letters of complaint to four different agencies, three of them for work purposes. Huh. To date, one has replied promptly and we are currently in negotiations, and the other three have failed to respond, but respectively stopped sending us nasty letters for money we don’t owe, stopped taking money by direct debit for services we no longer receive, and uh, well, nothing for the last.

Have suspicion that hot water plumbing at work may be at too high a pressure. Kitchen tap has always leaked a bit. Silly old plumber said we’d just have to live with it. Lately kitchen leak grew up to be a waterfall. Pending plumber, we switched it off at the kitchen stopcock. On the other side of the stopcock, the pipe goes to the bathroom. The tap sprouted a leak. New plumber came and fixed them both on Thursday. Twenty-four hours later the kitchen hot stopcock sprouted a leak. Hmm.

On the same day, DB (full time employee for last five years) noticed that I’d had the bathroom window fixed. That is, the very large hole in the glass of the very large covering half of one wall frosted window. That I’d fixed in November. Points for observation.

On Friday I talked with our new staff, JC, and she is good to stay. Yay! Celebrated with wine at the Phoenix.

As Chris had a spare aquarium going, I ran the idea past Charles about having an aquarium in the waiting area. After a serious conversation about costs we decided it was a goer. At which point Charles went from 50yo to 5yo, and bounced up and down with requests to have sharks and eels and seahorses and anemones and koi and Japanese fighting fish. All in the same fresh water tank. Uh, no. me in mom-mode. Lets start with Danios shall we…? And let’s not let Charles buy any fish…

Got home to find that Ghostie had a acquired a new battery. Lovely surprise! And Chris lurking with smug grin.

Went immediately over to Margate for a meeting regarding the Scapa Flow expedition in August. And believe me, it *is* an expedition! We didn’t want to go via either Canterbury or Dover/Pfizer in what was still the rush hour, so sat nav took us via Faversham. Longer, but faster. After many biscuits, we came back home to relax.

Leo is still here and still fighting. I have a new treatment for him to try if he’s still with us tomorrow.

The wind was still blowing this morning, and we were due to go to Ras Mohammad again. The usual dives were out though, so we went to a couple of reefs I’ve never dived before.

Lighthouse Reef is at the very tip of Ras Mohammad, and a haven for snorkellers. It also had a depressingly large quantity of rubbish on the reef. Chris and Strood Chris both picked up large plastic bags that were strangling fire coral.

The lower depths were quite desolate, but the upper levels were gorgeous coral gardens, thriving with life. Things we saw included a giant moray, a masked pufferfish getting cleaned, a jellyfish pretending to be an anemone, pipefish, and the most enormous one full metre filefish, specifically a scribbled leather jacket.

The second dive was the reef next door, Key Reef, and this was debatably the best dive of the holiday. There was still rubbish, but not nearly as much as Lighthouse. We were greeted by a youngish giant moray, and saw more giant morays of various sizes and ages throughout the dive. A titan triggerfish kept us company for a short while, clearly not nesting as it was very chilled out.

But the things that really made us happy dance were first an eagle ray that flew slowly by us, and then a big devil ray which was lying on the bottom, and took off after we’d watched it for a while.

The last dive of the holiday was at Ras Ghoslani, which was very picturesque and a lot of the small stuff, along with the morays, came out to say goodbye.

Checking out is always the saddest part of the holiday, especially checking out of the dive centre. But short work was made of that and we returned to the hotel for showers and food.

Now Thomas Cook very nearly caused us grief as we did not know the pick up time for the airport and could find no board for Thomas Cook in the myriad of boards for other companies. It was only when Chris spoke with a Thomsons rep who told us off for not attending the TC reps briefing on Monday (well, sorry, but we had plans that conflicted, so there), that it transpired that, despite having travelled out under TC, when it came to information, they were using the name Panorama. And of course there was a lovely big board for Panorama telling us everything we needed to know.

We mooched off for dinner at eight, preferring to stick to the Italian restaurant (you can have food from any restaurant and eat it in any) because of the lack of screaming kids. Or so I thought.

We turned up, and the MaitreD’, Captain Ahmed greeted us and took us to a specially laid table with lots of flowers, and tablecloth swan and an ice bucket with wine. An idea by Chris and carried out by the restaurant staff, it was a complete surprise to me, and brought a tear to my eye.

Is it really awful of me to say that I might just have got a real kick out of the jealous looks I got from other guests? I think one or two blokes might just have been in the doghouse…

We had a lovely evening, and eventually fell into bed.

Sunday we pack, check out and lie by the pool/beach until pick up. Moo. But the holiday isn’t over until its over.

There was one very important event that I forgot to mention yesterday; I did my 200th dive! Hee!

Anyway, today they were only six minutes late in picking us up, which in dive time is very good. We went to Ras Mohammed again, and had another day’s excellent diving.

The group for the first dive wasn’t the best organised; no fault of the dive guide, it was a much bigger group than we’ve hjad so far and people were being undisciplined, especially with regards to maintaining contact with their buddy. A diplomatic style of telling off before the second dive, and the group was much more together. Again a very experienced group, which is just marvellous.

Barry and Vladimir were on board again, and we were joined by (another) Chris from Strood. There were also Kirsty and her boyfriend Roma who both work for Aquarius, but were actually on board on their day off as Kirsty is learning to dive. We had Sharif for our guide today, who is very good at spotting things.

We went to Shark and Yolanda again, but as we all had good air, made it a much longer dive by including Anemone City, which I think I’ve only done once before, maybe twice.

Making the trip across the deep blue from one reef to the other is a little scary. As you lose site of Anemone City, you hope that you’re headed in the right direction for Shark Reef. Eventually, it looms as a big shadow, clarifying into a steep wall that we followed around to Yolanda Reef and wreck.

As one might imagine we saw many anemone fish in their anemones, a lot with babies hiding in the tentacles. Also present were dominoes with tiny babies that were a fuzzy grey because their colours haven’t come in yet.

The big napoleon was back to play with us, along with a turtle who was having dinner. Sharif looked very hard for hammerhead sharks but couldn’t find any for us.

Ras Ghoslani was next with an excellent little cave system at the beginning. There are plenty of varied and large corals here, although the most striking thing were the periodic clouds of baby triggerfish.

Right at the end a colourful sea slug/squirt/cucumber was on a coral finding its way around with it’s black tentacles. It didn’t seem to realise that it was on the end of a sticky out bit that didn’t really have anywhere for it to go.

The third dive was nice and relaxed at Temple again, and there were only five of us diving. We took it slowly and saw a lot of little things; soft corals, shellfish and tiny fish that inhabit certain corals and caves. At the end of the dive, however, Chris had a bit of a mental breakdown and lost control of his buoyancy when a manta ray (yes, one of those really big ones) popped in and out of sight for a moment.

On the return we had a spot of tea before retiring to the room. Now, the cleaners have this wonderful tradition of making towel sculptures on the beds for guests. Yesterday’s swan had my sunglasses perched on its nose which was very cool.

Today, he had gone all out, making the swan with one towel, and using others to make a river scene, including a wavy towel for the choppy water.