Back from Brixham

Dive holidays are very definitely holidays in the sense of escaping from the usual round of concerns. They're physically exhausting, but for the entire week you don't think about anything other than the dive you've just done, who you're diving with later, what dives are being planned for later in the week, what state your kit's in and whether you've got enough air. The exceptions are thinking about how tired you are, wondering vaguely where the next starchy or lardy food's coming from, and drinking beer. And rambling conversations about things that may or may not be relevant, like kit configurations, our diving officer's experiences as soundman for various 70s and 80s rock bands, or whether list songs are a sure sign of a band's impending decline. (I'm concerned for the Arctic Monkeys on the basis of their most recent single, I can tell you.) I took a novel with me; I haven't so much as picked it up all week. I took stuff for learning Dutch with me; I managed about an hour of that halfway through the week but that's it. Some people take more time off, but frankly once you've paid for the accommodation and getting there, the dives on a dive club holiday are dirt cheap so I think it's a shame not to do as many as possible. There were twenty-something of us, ranging from someone who'd never dived in the sea before this week to people with hundreds of dives, also including a blind man who dives on a rebreather that gives him audio signals and feels his way around wrecks, so I got to dive with all sorts of people, and also got to do a day's marshalling which means I've now passed my Dive Leader. I've got a drysuit with a leak in one leg, a huge pile of slightly damp socks to wash, horribly split and chapped lips, some leftover chicken from Thursday's barbecue for tea, various bruises and a slightly bad back, no idea what's been happening in the news this week, and a captain's hat and big bottle of scrumpy that were leaving presents from the dive club.

Meanwhile, Chris leaves the country on Wednesday morning and my house is still full of all sorts of stuff that needs to be got rid of. Er.