About Me
Short, fat, pierced and the anti-chirst too, depending on who you listen to.
The green line disappears into the gloom below, I feel the bumps of the coils as they slip between my fingers, guiding me down. Current tugs at my fins and I shine the powerful beam from my torch into dark infinity. Checking my computer I see I am at 20m, less than halfway there. Alone except for the fish, I plunge onwards, seeking the lee of the wreck which I know lies below.
An hour later surfacing into the orange glow of the late afternoon sun, the mirror flat water stretching from horizon to endless horizon I wonder if I have died 40m below and am now in whatever heaven may be.
This is a short story of diving, and a journey of spiritual discovery, not knowing I was searching for anything at all, I inadvertently found myself. I was under the sea. As opposed to under the sofa with all the 10p’s, biros and dust.
Where to start? Well the beginning is always a good place. I began diving two weeks before my final exams at University in 2001. Never being good at any sport, entering anything even slightly competitive or sport orientated with the certain knowledge you are never going to win or be good at it made me incredibly wary of diving. I can’t recall a single event where I was not last to be picked from the line of girls freezing in the rain, sloppy mud slowly soaking through our trainers.
A friend of mine took me along for a pool session to break the monotony of revision and suddenly I had a new passion. I coped with being underwater like a natural. Completing my pool training with ease, I longed for the sea, my watersports background preparing me well for anything involving boats.
Once I left university I lost a huge part of my identity. For three years I had been a student, suddenly I was nothing. I wonder how much of this need for an identity made me want to dive, as at the very least I was a diver. I have always said that being a diver is not simply something you do, its very much something you are. Diving certainly has more kudos than, say, playing squash.
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Stepping from the ferry onto the walkway I peer through the glass panels into the harbour below, gulls wheeling overhead just as they do today. The eight hour drive a blurry memory, the promise of sleep calling us onward as we load what at the time seemed a tiny fraction of my possessions, bags packed and re-packed minus things I felt I needed, but couldn’t bring.
Now I seem to have too much stuff. Things that were important to me then, things I couldn’t possibly live without are utterly forgotten about. Somehow in the past few months I have learned the true value of life, and to me so very little of the value is made up of things we simply own.
Someone said I was brave for leaving all that I knew behind for a life I had no idea I would enjoy. Brave is not a word I would use at all, selfish is better, to turn my back on friends and family to travel north to a place I had first come to a few years before as a diver with less than 100 dives to my name and a chip the size of Manchester on my shoulder.
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Seeing the advert in the back of a diving magazine I phoned the number and soon was on my first journey north, to Scapa Flow, Orkney. Meeting with Mark, a theatre nurse who had driven from London in the late afternoon, we chatted idle diver talk into the evening hours, when we adjourned at a pub in the middle of nowhere for our digs and some food.
The first view of the Orkneys filled me with dread and regret. What the hell had I got myself into? The increasing bleakness of Caithness and the far northern parts of Scotland had soured my impression of this corner of the UK. On the horizon, under low dark clouds, Orkney looked foreboding and utterly uninviting. I kept my fears to myself, at least I would get to dive the German fleet, something the ego in me thought was a good thing at the time.
Back then I was full of ego. I was 90% ego, 5% bullshit 5% pure luck in the water which lasted until probably as recently as last year. Telling someone they are not good enough to do something can go two ways. They can believe you, and go on to never do it, or say sod you and do it anyway simply to prove you wrong. I fell into the latter category and stepping from the ferry and seeing the Jean Elaine for the first time, I felt something. Quite what I don’t know. Nervousness, maybe. I don’t know. I have been to some fantastic places in my time, but Orkney just did something to me, deep down.
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As a very young and immature 22, I had just experienced the first real bereavement in my life – the loss of a colleague to a horrific paragliding accident a week before coming up to dive. I hardly knew him at all, but that sudden feeling of knowing I would never see him walk through the door again complaining about the surgery being full and who had booked Mrs Tait in for the last appointment because she always talked for half an hour and there was nothing wrong with the sodding dog anyway.
Working at a vets, for many a dream job, in reality I was the lowest of the low in the practice, and constantly reminded of this. But it was money, and I always liked to think that I was good at what I did.
Sitting on the gunwhale of the Jean Elaine as we headed out of the flow and north I felt a sudden closeness to Graeme. He would have loved to be where I was then, and if he had been there when I got back he would have relished hearing my tales of the northern isles.
Scanning the flat water for anything hinting at being a dolphin, I idly glance down to see the mirror image of two orca, riding our bow wave. Two huge bodies in parallel to the boat, silently watching me through the clear water in front of the bow wave. In hindsight I wonder who was watching who. It took me a few seconds to realise what I could see, then shout to everyone else. The mad stampede of people was too late. A sight for only a privileged few, and one I will never forget.
All too soon my week was over, and I felt such sadness, overwhelming emptiness I made sure that Ingrid had my details for any other trips coming up. Soon enough I was back in Orkney, diving the flow, getting my nitrox certification and doing my favourite wreck – the Tabarka.
Work was a pain, as I mentioned I was the lowest of the low. Any awful job, cleaning up after weak bladdered dogs, stuffing envelopes or simply making 27 cups of tea was always my job. Diving somehow offset the bad Karma, the worse the work was, the more diving I felt I needed to sort me out, make me feel alive when work made me feel utterly dead.
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Joining Yorkshire Divers was a turning point for me. Trawling the internet for somewhere to get a dive, I was introduced to the site by a long time member and quickly got stuck in. The anonymity was excellent, as the animosity left by my ex-diving club was still red raw in my mind. I could be who I wanted to be and no-one would ever know. Porg was born, my pseudonym, and became me for the next four years. Outspoken, egotistical, bitter and downright annoying, I gradually began to dislike who I was becoming. Getting drunk, and doing stupid, stupid things was something I needed to grow out of and the identity of Porg was not helping matters. However, somehow, deep down, I enjoyed it. The almost fame, people who I didn’t know knew me and being able to say things I would never have said in reality. How strange.
Leaving the vets was like a breath of fresh air for me, I began working at a boat builders. Despite how it sounds, this was a good job only for a few months as after that the company started to fail, gasping for breath like a dying man. Blame was apportioned to anyone and everyone. Once again, regardless of being the lowest of the low, I seemed to be a blame repository.
Desperate to leave a job I hated with a passion (but it paid for diving) YD became some strange sanctuary from the misery of once again being made to feel like something smelly and slightly sticky stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. On YD I had people who had some kind of warped respect for me, and in a life where I was so low I could glance up at the earthworms, it was more to me than anything else. The other thing it did for me was to give me some sort of adrenaline buzz through surfing the forums when I should have been working. The not getting caught aspect got me through so many boring days, I only realised this when my boss went away for a week and I enjoyed the freedom less than I thought I would.
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In January 2005 I decided to do my DIR fundamentals, a course that changed me completely as a diver. Gone were the 101 things attached to D rings, now relegated to pockets, gone also was much of the attitude which went with my diving before. Suddenly I was back at square one, and it was through the efforts of the DIR community, Dave Williamson in particular, that I carried on diving. I had never been so close to giving up diving - the mountain I had to climb looked unmanageable. But with his saintly patience and far too many dives in Ellerton Lake (one is more than enough at this site) we got there and I became better than I ever had been. Be it wrong or right for anyone else on the planet, DIR changed me and I take lots of what I learned from that weekend in the freezing waters of Capernwray and Ellerton and use it to this day.
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“I’m sorry, but we are going to have to let you go”. The news broke on the Tuesday, that I was one of the people earmarked for redundancy from the boat builders. I cried, not tears for the fact I was leaving, but for the uncertainty it would bring. That Friday we left for Scapa, taking our time to drive the many hours to Thurso and Scrabster to board the Hamnavoe to Orkney. A week was spent diving and having fun, with only one day lost to the weather being awful.
On the Friday my tattered drysuit finally gave up the ghost, unfortunately I was at 30m at the time and decided to can the dive. Ascending racing the no deco clock on my computer, I made it to the 20m mark with only a few seconds to spare, as I passed 19m and was graced with twenty more minutes of no deco time I pondered lingering to savour this last look at the wreck of the Koln. The water pouring through my neckseal said otherwise, and I ascended to the warmth of the boat. Stepping into the shower I felt great as the hot water thawed me out. Going back below to get dressed I could hear the boats engine noise change as Andy picked up the other divers, and I made my way up to help them de-kit.
The cold lazy wind chilled me, and I decided to go back below to change my jumper for a warmer one and saw the telltale rash over my chest. Red blotches with defined edges spread over my chest and arms. I was bent. Bugger.
A trip to the pot and we made our way home over the two points of altitude and I fell into my bed, feeling like death warmed up in a microwave on supernova. Back to work on Monday and I wasn’t right. Concentration to rival a five year old on too many e-numbers but without the stickiness told me things still were not right, and I made the call to the diving doctor. A trip to A&E where I was viewed as a curiosity but taken far more seriously when I failed the balance test and couldn’t point to my nose with my eyes shut (some fucker stole my nose and moved it god dammit) it became obvious there was something wrong. Another two recompressions and I was as unbent as I was ever going to get, but was told I needed a PFO test.
Many people who get a skin bend are told to be checked out for a hole in the heart. The logic for this is simple – the bubbles which form when we dive are trapped in the lungs and dissipate harmlessly, a PFO is a hole which lets bubbles through and consequently to the skin, brain and anywhere else.
The NHS viewed me as about as important as an ingrown toenail, which is pretty much fair enough. I could bitch about the amount of time I had to wait, but I wasn’t going to die from not diving or a PFO, well, not die from anything physical anyway and there are people out there who really do need treatment far more than me.
In truth the fact that I was no longer a diver tore me apart, the real impact of this striking home in the winter months when plans for the next year were being laid. I couldn’t put my name down for anything, no trips, no holidays. Nothing. Being a diver is not something you do, its something you are, and suddenly I was without identity, future or purpose.
“When did you start feeling like this?” asked the doctor. I could name you the exact hour on the exact day, the day my life fell apart. The letter from the diving doctor in Orkney recommending that I be checked out for the PFO ended my diving career, albeit temporarily. The most devastating bit of paper I had ever held in my hands. Nothing to look forward to and unemployment meant I sank into depression.
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Many of the opinions I had, I no longer have now, these days always striving to be an open mind and a closed mouth. But as the wisest person I have ever met said to me “never regret anything”.
What a strange thing for Rob to say I thought when I first heard it, but once he had explained, those three words changed my life. I regret many things I thought. Actually, I regretted most of my life up to that point and was close to doing something about ending it. But as he talked he told me that we should never regret things that we said or did thinking they were the best thing to do at the time. In one twenty-minute chat he obliterated so many of my regrets, and I turned a corner.
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Seeing Chris Hall for the last time also helped me see what I needed to do. Chris was an amazing diver, instructor and husband to Liz. Chris died from Motor Neurone Disease only months after his diagnosis. He faced the inevitable with dignity, humility and not an ounce of self pity. Seeing his reaction to me mentioning I was thinking about coming to Orkney helped make me wake up from the stupor I had been in. Suddenly time had value, life was not something to be wasted being miserable and looking for happiness. Life is a fatal disease, none of us are getting out alive.
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Finally I felt I had the need to change my online persona and the support to do so. Briefly I became Kelda (read Terry Pratchett if you need to know why) but then settled on my real name, comfortable that it was who I was, not something I could hide behind. It took a lot for me to lose the identity; somehow I doubt it will fully ever go.
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Chatting with Mark we organised to meet for a days diving at St Abbs, near Berwick, Scotland. St Abbs is one of my favourite diving spots, with me having done over 130 dives there in one year I know it well. On a beautiful still February day we leave the harbour in Pete Gibson’s tiny boat heading for the Black Carr, a site so varied I have yet to see the same bit of it twice. I know I shouldn’t be there, I know that I run a risk diving, but more than anything in the world, I need to dive otherwise I will forget what I am waiting for. 45 minutes later we climb back aboard, karma restored, I am still a diver.
Mark is also a freediver, something I have felt drawn to for a long time. Months of mucking around in the pool made me want to muck around in the sea with the unimaginable freedom you can only really get with simply suit, mask and fins. Setting foot into the north sea in February the water flooded into my semidry. A semidry. In February. I was waiting for the men in white coats to step out and carry me away to a nice padded cell.
Surprisingly I was warm, the only cold bits being my hands where my tattered gloves let the water in. My first session I got to 6m, nothing by scuba standards, but a very long way for me. The next day we move to a different site and we try again, going for times as well as depths. The adrenaline courses through my veins as I seem to be good at this, getting to 9m and staying down for what seems like ages but in reality was only a few seconds. Hardly pausing to get my breath back, I resubmerge, for another dive.
I feel the contraction of my diaphragm, carbon dioxide buildup spooking me as it is rarely this strong so soon. I kick for the surface, which suddenly seems such a long way away. Warmth takes me, the panic that was building is gone and all I can see is the blue rippling surface miles away.
Apparently I was out cold by 3m and it took about 10 seconds for me to come back with Mark holding my airway open and yelling at me to breathe. Too short a break between the dives had meant a huge carbon dioxide build up. Lesson learned, that was the first and hopefully the last time I manage that. Freediving filled a gap, it kept me sane and kept me a diver. Even now, there is something you get, some sort of immense satisfaction. The level of control over the body, the self-awareness is something I have never felt before, and keeps me going back for more.
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I made a short career in the diving press working for a website which honed my writing skills but then the firm offer of coming to Orkney was made by Hazel. At the time I needed to consider what I wanted to do with my life, my chats with Rob and Chris made me realise how much value life itself has, and how we should not spend our lives chasing happiness, as happiness itself is in the chase, not the goal.
Working miserable jobs to pay for things which try to make us happy is not the way to do things.
Round pegs will not fit in square holes and doing something which doesn’t make us happy is not good for us, or the job we do.
Somewhere we are all good at something, the trick is to find it and then find a job that lets you do it. Weakness is no problem if you acknowledge its presence, and sometimes it can be turned into a strength. As with most things, it simply depends on where you are standing as to how the world looks.
So I said sod it all, and decided to come to Orkney. If I was told tomorrow that I had 6 months to live, I could at least say that I have been truly happy, something precious few people can say.
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I was asked why I dive a few weeks ago. A fairly common question from a non-diver, but this was from another diver. Pondering it, I realised something I never really noticed before.
Underwater, I get inner peace.
My troubles are left on the boat. Yes, I know they are there waiting for me, but for an hour they can sit and watch the glassy surface and get bored while I admire the fish. Drowning them doesn’t work so they can obviously swim, but not dive. Somehow nothing else matters other than what is in front of me, how much gas I have left and how much deco I have racked up. Dives can make you feel alive when you feel totally dead. They can give you hope when the path ahead seems dark. They can make life, life, not simply an existence.
Many of us dive for such reasons as we want to see wrecks, wildlife, or simply love the floaty feeling it gives us. But try explaining the euphoria you feel as you surface from a mindblower dive to a non diver and you will struggle.
So here I am, living on a boat in a space no bigger than a single bed long by 5 foot 3 wide. More than enough room for anyone. Space is in your mind, and Orkney has lots of room.