I’ve been reading a very absorbing book called
Raising The Dead, by Phillip French.
I was so engrossed in it at lunch time that I
totally missed the appointment I had to get my hair cut. Good thing I was able
to re book for later next week.
But back to the book.
It’s the story of a cave dive that went very very
wrong. It begins with a vivid description of a deep cave dive when the body of
a diver who went missing a decade before is discovered. Unable to retrieve it
on his own the diver attaches his lead line to it and returns to the surface determined
to mount a rescue mission. The story then becomes retrospective charting the
diving history of the main protagonist.
As an ex diver the story I found the tale riveting.
Yes that’s right I used to dive and quite a lot too.
It all started a very long time ago when The Man and
I started to keep a seawater aquarium. No, we didn’t dive in that, if that’s what
you are thinking.
What we did do was to visit a local seaquarium to
try to find out why our little school of herring, yes herring, were becoming
infected with a fungal disease. That in itself is another story. The seaquarium
was also the home of a dive school. The Man and I began to go to their meetings
with the initial idea of The Man doing the dive course and I’d tag along so
that I could be the safe person on the boat,
Well that was the theory anyway.
The underwater world has always entranced me, but I thought
that the charismatic Jacques Cousteau and his great TV programmes would be as
close as I would ever get.
Why?
Well as an asthmatic I always thought that diving would
be something I could never do.
Never say never.
So what changed things?
I discovered that one of the dive masters daughters
was also an asthmatic and she dived!
So what happened next, well no prizes for guessing
that I did the dive course too and The Man and I became PADI qualified.
Not only did diving extend the range of capture for
our little seaquarium, it introduced us to a magic world. It’s probably hard to
understand the total feeling of escape from all the worries of the world if you’ve
never given yourself up to the experience. I’ve never been keen about swimming at a
beach, always a bit worried about what might be under the water; to dive in the
sea might sound a bit contradictory.
Not at all. In the magical liquid world everything
is revealed, especially if you wait quietly and watch. Not much life there you
might think when you first pause at a rocky outcrop. Patience is rewarded when
the critters that you scared into hiding come back out and take up where they
left off before you arrived.
As I write this I can again taste the salty tang of
the air, mixed with the rubbery taste from my mouthpiece.
The Man and I spent many many happy weekends diving
in and around wellington and then later when we lived in the tropics.
But that as I have said before is another story, or three.
The seaquarium that was at the start of our diving
is no longer there, nor is the charismatic scot who was McArthur Park.
RIP Bill, slight of build but huge of heart.
http://www.poriruacity.com/multimedia/pdf/2009_11_25/05.pdf
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/kapi-mana-news/3089243/Remembering-Bill-McArthur
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