w.atching the w.orld unw.ind

Today's lyric:

"Space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement
Kurt Cobain can you hear the spheres, singing songs off station to station
And Alderon's not far away, it's Californication."

Red Hot Chilli Peppers: "Californication"
From the album: "Californication"

Unless you're very jaded (in which case, you shouldn't be doing it) there must be a moment for every diver when they're sat on the side of the boat, just waiting their turn to topple back into the water, and you think "I'm about to enter an alien environment. What will I see? Will it be a good dive?"

Our first dive on Saturday was over the fossil beds just off the Sussex coast. Having courteously waited while the other ten divers kitted up and plunged in - then helped two back on board who'd had trouble getting down - we were told that our fifty minutes 'bottom time' was reduced to thirty. Bit of a pi55er, really, considering we'd paid the same as every one else for the dive? But in practice, the vis(ibility) wasn't that good (less than two metres) and there wasn't really that much to see anyway. It's decided us not to do that type of dive again. Leastways, in the UK.

Dive 2 was our old favourite, the Far Mulberry. In Bracklesham Bay, 1.3 miles off the coast and in only twelve metres of water, it's an easy, shallow dive with lots to see in a sheltered area, so vis is usually 2-3 metres. Good enough for what we wanted.

Hovering with neutral buoyancy in a bait ball of pouting, bib and bream is just surreal. They're so used to divers, they just let you pass through the shoal and regroup behind you. Fascinating. And we managed a good 64 minutes of bottom time. Hey, I may just Copy/Paste all this into my Dive Log?

In other news, f.i.l. is recovering from his first dose of chemo, to try to stem the lung cancer aided and abetted by 60 years of smoking. He's in danger of seriously dehydrating because he can't hold down fluid, but we'd spoken to others who've gone through it and ginger ale was recommended. So we just left a bottle behind and apparently it's going down well. Maybe it really is a stomach-settler?

He also 'fancied' beef tea, so we traipsed off to Morrisson's and bemused the butcher with our request for prime meat to make tea with. I'm sure he thought I was some kind of nutter. And his second 'fancy' was - with the nurse's approval - brandy with lovage. Also apparently a soother for tender tums?

The young lad we approached and asked "Lovage?" also backed off, muttering "I've only just started working here - leave me alone!" So we managed to find it unaided and left that behind too.

I'll let you know whether it was such a good idea or not...