This article first appeared in 1964 in the
Winter edition of the Curragh's newsletter. CFT was just one year
old and it was the year when the diver of the year was John Hailes.
ON TAKING UP DIVING
By
A. B. Ginner
In the dead depths of winter I relive happy days and dives by
browsing through my dive log. It tells me that it is now almost
a year since I paid a certain man from Limerick large sums for
my first aqualung. I don’t have to be reminded of what happened
when it came. The second thing I did was to varnish it to protect
the paint. There is still a little varnish left. The first thing
I did was to get the new cylinder re-filled. Not that the man
from Limerick was so mean as to send it to me empty. Far from
it. There has never been more air in it since – at least
judging from the noise it made when it came out.
I propped it on a chair in the bedroom the evening it arrived.
The following morning just to show that it did not like being
disturbed by my getting the morning tea, it rolled off the chair.
It knocked it’s knob off the chair arm and lay on the floor.
The resulting swishing roar made me drop the tea and disappear
into the kitchen. The wife disappeared under the blankets. We
both waited for the inevitable explosion, which, strangely, never
came. The roar settled into a sibilant hiss. A head appeared from
underneath a pillow and said ‘Good God’. Another head
appeared round the door and said ‘Good God’. A fine
white powder over everything. The bottle had pointed it’s
nozzle at the ashes of the previous evening’s turf fire.
It took the wife two days to clean the mess.
Looking back on it now, I have decided that that was a true and
proper introduction to diving. If ever a game was organisedly
disorganised, this is it. If ever a game suffered from the players,
this is it, and if you really want chaos, come diving.
I did not know this at the time and realisation did not dawn for
weeks. Instead it began well. We trained and were instructed.
We were told what all the bits were for. We were told in what
order to put them on. We were told what to do when we got into
the water and even what to do when we came out. We had the training
sessions on Saturday afternoons and then the day came for THE
DIVE. Even though we had all the packed our stuff the week before,
snorkels had switched bags, buckles broke, altercations took place
over the ownership of depth gauges and a solitary flipper, some
people dressed and some just talked but eventually we all lined
up and splashed in. Briefing had been done, course plotted and
dive leader appointed. All went well until we passed a rock. Five
divers explored the rock, four divers left it. We came round another
rock and went after a dog-fish – or at least two did. The
other two were afterwards found to have chased a ray in the opposite
direction. Need I go on?
The time allowed for dives is two hours messing and one hour diving.
Which is just as well as it is the only way in which you can get
warm at the game. You go into strict training in order to spend
an hour taking the least possible amount of exercise. I had better
not tell of the day when the boat cover drifted two miles away
and we then spent the evening praying when the divers did not
surface after two hours. Nor what happened when they lost an oar.
There must be a special guardian angel for dive leaders and a
special poltergeist for diving clubs.
After a year I can no longer be surprised. You see, I have met
more divers since and the more I meet, the more I am convinced
that all divers are lunatics. Maybe they would not be diving if
they weren’t. There is no such thing as a normal average
diver. I have met fat divers and thin ones, bearded ones and ones
waving strange facial growths. Some even shave on weekdays. I
have met divers muttering about nucella lapillus and the habits
of chlamys opercularis. I have even seen a diver giving a recitation
hanging from a mantle-piece. I have disgraced myself by appearing
on a dive dressed in my Sunday suit. I gather that this is NOT
DONE. And yet all divers have one common characteristic. The will
do anything for anybody. If they cannot, they say they will. There
is still a new cylinder coming for me by tomorrow’s train
last May.
I have met these dirty unshorn rough-clad eccentrics at annual
dinners. I did not recognise them. They had clean shirts, ties,
creased trousers and glamorous women. They drank from glasses
and were even heard to talk of non-diving matters. Were these
my gods of yesteryear? Strange to say, yes, and even better company
when found to be uninfluenced by the trappings of society.
Long may they prosper and long may the average man stick at his
golf. The only thing that worries me now is what sort of character
am I?
Back to Newsletter
