First aid and puglettes

So, the second Saturday in September was taken up with Sports Coach training. Interesting stuff on Sports Nutrition and Sports Injury. A lot of typical sports stuff isn’t applicable to diving as we are not high intensity, but we did get some good snippets. And there was one Sports Coach who got very little out of the day; he taught chess.

On the Sunday we dived the Empress of Fort William, off Samphire Hoe. Embarrassingly, Medsac had lost an anchor there the week before (but not when we were on her!), and we were hoping to retrieve it. So, we threw our spare anchor (not the backup anchor, that’s a smaller one) over to hold the shotline, and mooched on down for the dive. It was just lovely. Nice visibility, light water and lots of nooks and crannies for lobsters and crabs and blennies to hide in. Chris and I came back up with some good pictures. The spare anchor was safely sent back up to the surface. Andy and Jude spotted the AWOL anchor and sent that safely up to the surface. Steve and Dave discovered a CQR anchor and towed that up to the surface too!

The following weekend we went to Weymouth. Leaving after lunch, we had a good trip down with just one sticky patch outside Winchester, arriving around five. This time we stayed at the Beach House at Portland. Although the standard of hotel was the same as the last place we stayed, we preferred this one. A bit more roomy and the landlord was a bit of a character.

The weather was beautiful for us the entire weekend, and the wrecks were stunning. Using the dive boat Tango, we dove the Elenor R, the BlackHawk bow, and the Binnendijk (or something...) and a drift dive that scooted us along the seabed quite quickly. Lots of conversations on that dive went along the lines of ‘Ooh, look at-! Too late.’

The traffic was waiting for us, and we managed all the way from Weymouth Marina to the bottom of the M3 without ever getting the opportunity to move out of second gear. We snuggled up with a Humvee called Oz, and a car with twin girls in the back, pulling a trailer with t win dinghies marked up with Annie and Katie. Getting very tired, we left our new friends to queue up for the M3 whilst we decided to nip along the A3(M) instead, and that turned out to be a wise move. We stopped at a Little Chef for dinner, hit one set of roadworks, and arrived at the M25 in time to meet up with Oz, Annie and Katie. Bizarre or what.

Last weekend was a girly weekend, which was excellent. I decided on a career change. *furtive look* I’ll let you know how that goes after I’ve tested the waters...

Tuesday was another of those lunchless days where I left work a little early to charge up to Chatham and attend another Sports Coaching course. First Aid this time. I was quite pleased to find myself proficient in Rescue Breaths and Compressions thanks to the drills in the diver training courses. But, uh, if you cut yourself, you might want to find someone else to put a bandage on, unless you have a thing for being bandaged to the chair, or your arm bandaged to your leg.

Wednesday we went to Leybourne to dive. I would have dived too, except I charged up there straight from work and discovered that once again I’d forgotten a key piece of equipment. This time, my dry suit. D’oh!

Friday was an exciting day. Somewhere in France, a couple of weeks ago, a button was pushed and a Puglette with Chris’ name on was born. The order for Puglette specified ‘Peugeot 407 SW Sport 2ltr HDi in Aluminium Silver with JBL sound system’. The last two weeks has been a bit traumatic for Chris, as Puglette managed to wander off shortly after she was born and no one could find her to bring her to England. Eventually she was found, scared but excited in a transport hub somewhere near Coventry awaiting delivery to Chris. After a sleepless night, Chris was ecstatic at around 10.32 and 15 seconds to see her pull up at his place. Love at first sight? Oh yeah. Exactly as specified.

We went out to dinner at the Woolpack Friday night, especially so I could enjoy the brand new passenger side of the car. Saturday, I inspected the driver’s side and drove her all day, down to Folkestone and back via the scenic route. I think I like her. Chris isn’t sure about a name for her yet, but it might be Suki. Chris is very happy with the sound system. Personally I was non-committal. It played music and that was about as much as I appreciated it, as I’m just not that aural. Until Meatloaf came on. One of his big powerful orchestral numbers. Excellent sound system.

We had Mel around to dinner last night and Chris cooked steak. The vampire in me was very happy, and Mel was on form so we had a good evening.