Posted 11:02 AM by Gobbler
Little Blogger

Last day with the oranges of seville. and the computer is still giving me jip, it just wiped out my post. i had spent 17 hours non-stop perfecting my theory on the meaning of life and minutes ago it was close to completion, then internet explorer encountered a problem and had to close. Microsoft were sorry for the inconvenience and asked if i wouldn't mind sending them an error report. Ás you can imagine, i was mighty hacked off ythat my perfected theory on the meaning of life was annihilated by the internet explorer deciding to die, especially as i do not have time to repeat it now. so i'll just post a random bit of story instead...


Dive Of A Lifetime
Koh Tao, Thailand
July 24?

Already it was the day of the final practice dives. Two days before they had carried out the trial dives in the dirty swimming pool of the diving school, spending the morning checking and learning about the equipment and the afternoon practicing being underwater with all the gear on, the theory being that if you cock something up with your equipment it is better to do it in a swimming pool where you probably won’t die, as opposed to the open sea where anything can happen.

It seems barmy that after a few hours training you can be put into a wetsuit, have an air canister strapped on your back with a few tubes running out of it, be wished good luck and then dumped in the ocean, but this is what happened the next day. Nobody drowned or even looked at any point like they might, scuba diving is now so simple that anyone can do it after such a short period of instruction and, as long as you’re not a total dickhead and fiddle with the various knobs and switches ‘to see what will happen’, it is safe.

Scuba diving sounds dangerous. It is one of those sports where it is very easy to do yourself a serious nasty or even die if you make even a small mistake with your equipment. But even so, you don’t need to know all that much about it because there isn’t all that much to know. In England you spend weeks and tons of money before they let you near a bit of sea, which means, conveniently, that the scuba diving people make lots more money out of you; in places like Thailand they plop you in the water after less than a couple of days and four dives later you’ve only been set back a hundred quid including accommodation.

It hadn’t been Paul’s original plan to come to Koh Tao. Originally he was going to go to Koh Pan Yang, nearby. Koh Samui, Koh Pan Yang and Koh Tao are close together in a little area of ocean off the west coast of Thailand. While Koh Samui is the biggest and the most developed, Koh Pan Yang is smaller and popular with backpackers as it is the home of the world famous Full Moon Party which takes place monthly, during the night of the full moon no less, along the main beach, where hundreds of young people spend the night getting hammered, taking any drugs they can find and trying to get laid, and end the night pissing, vomiting and swimming in the sea. It sounded like a good time all round. That had been Plan A for Paul but he would not have been able to get there quickly enough and would have missed the Full Moon Party and so had decided to give Koh Tao a bash instead. Koh Tao, the smallest, quietest and least developed of the three, is best known at the moment for its diving and that is the main reason people come to the island.

So Paul had come to learn how to dive. Obviously he was planning on doing his fair share of getting pissed and laid as well, all in a days work after all. On coming to the island, however, that was not his main concern, for there was one thing about the idea of diving that had always put him off it, one thing that had always put the shitters up him big time. You see, in a swimming pool you can always see the bottom and even when you’re swimming in the sea you’re never very far from the surface. With diving, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. There might come a moment underwater, especially if the water was murky, when he wouldn’t be able to see the bottom or the surface.

Imagine it; we’re all accustomed to having a hard surface to stand on and when you’re swimming you expect to know where the surface is at all times; it comes in handy for stuff like breathing. But if you’re diving and you can’t see either, things are different. There you are, having left surface far behind you, with an apparently bottomless sea beneath you with untold creatures of the deep waiting to eat you. Perhaps, as you are there in the murky depths trying to work out where the hell you are, they will be there; the great white sharks, related to Jaws and keen for revenge; the giant squids and octopi and electric eels and poisonous jellyfish and all things ugly, all streaming towards you as fast as they can go, racing to be the first to gobble you up.

But it could be worse. Paul’s optimistic mind had figured out a way that it could be worse. Because, even if you couldn’t see the bottom or the surface, as long as you had a bit of rock to cling to, as long as you can show yourself that this great expanse of nothingness has an edge, a face of jagged rock rising up from the murk into the murk. Rock is land, it is safe, it is close to the shore. It might even have a few pretty fishies swimming about, saying hello. You can cling to that rock like a child to its mother and you feel that, as long as you are there with it, nothing bad can happen. If there wasn’t even a rock, it would be worse. Mummy’s gone. But then, there’s only so much you can see and do clinging to a rock, after all. So you leave the rock, because you are big and brave and bold and not afraid of all those monsters.

Imagine if you are x metres down. You cannot see the bottom or the surface, nor can you see the sides, not even a bit of rock which you left it, somewhere over that way. You can see nothing beyond the murk and you don’t know where you are. Still it could be worse. As long as you have someone else there with you, it could be worse. Someone to share your pain, your fate. If you could speak, you might say to them "Oh tits, what the bloody hell do we do now?" and even if they replied, "I don’t know, I’m really scared and I don’t know where we are or what to do," even if they said that, things would be better as long as there was someone else there. But what if you’re alone?

You are x plus a few more metres down. You cannot see the bottom or the surface, nor can
you see the sides, not even a bit of rock, nothing beyond the murk. You are completely alone. It’s bad enough that at any moment you are expecting a monster, colossal, spikey teethed, black eyed and open mouthed, to appear out of the murk and shred you, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that, as you can’t see anything fixed, you have no way to get your bearings. First you left the shore behind, then you left the surface behind, and now you can see nothing, not even a comforting rock to hold and feel safe. So how do you know that you’re not sinking?

You could be going merrily along, hoping to bump into something or someone not monstrous but familiar, assuming that, even though you can’t see where you’re going, everythings going to turn out alright. You can’t see where you’re going but it’ll work out so it doesn’t matter. Divings safe these days, it’s all been worked out, you’ll be fine. Heck, you’ve given up even looking where you’re going. And all the time you do not realise that you’re gradually sinking deeper, deeper into the oblivion below. Gradually, bit by bit, inch by inch, you’re sinking, drifting further from the shore and the surface. But you can’t be sure it’s happening, because you can’t see. You’ve got plenty of air left in that tank, the meter says so, there’s plenty of time and no need to worry. So what if you are sinking a little, you’ll probably rise again in a little while and you seem to be going pretty straight now although you can’t be sure.

But you don’t bump into anything, nothing appears through the murk. All you know is that you are, breath by breath, running out of air, running out of life. You can’t see anything, or hear anything except your heartbeat, which is gradually getting faster, using up more air, more life. And all the time you’ve been sinking, slowly, centimetre by centimetre, but you didn’t know it. You keep going, blindly hoping, not realising you are still slowly sinking.

After a while you finally admit that you are lost and that you don’t know what to do and panic begins to set in, which uses up your precious and dwindling air supply more quickly and still you don’t know whether you’re going up or down because you can’t see anything. You begin to feel light headed as the oxygen narcosis kicks in; you’ve gone too deep. Once you’ve gone beyond a certain depth the water pressure means that more oxygen than normal is in your brain, making you high. And still you can’t see where you’re going or work out how to get back to the surface and you’re running out of air but you keep going and you slowly sink deeper. And then you’ve sunk so deep and got so high and you’re so far from the surface it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s too late, because even if you could find out how to get back you’re now so short of air that you’d have to rise so fast you’d get the bends.

The deeper you are, the more air you must breathe in because the water pressure compacts it meaning your lungs must take in more. As you return to the surface the air expands again as the water pressure reduces, meaning that you must exhale as much as you can to get rid of it. But if you rise too quickly there isn’t time for the oxygen to get out of your blood and it expands too much creating air bubbles which restricts the blood flow and can cause clots, which is very bad news, and air bubbles in your brain mean you may never be the same again. If you were in too deep and have come up too quick, the bends will kill you.

You have gone too deep because you never worked out where you were, you just kept going hoping it would work out, but now you’re too deep and you’ve almost run out of air. If you return to the surface now, if you could, the shock to your body would kill you. So you keep going down, you let the narcosis take you away and hopefully, when the end comes, just a few minutes from now, you won’t feel it too much. You keep going down, because now nothing but pain awaits you on the surface. All you did was lose your way in the murk. You never stopped to make sure you were going the right way because you thought it would be alright but it isn’t. And now it’s over.

Paul was worried about the possibility that might happen. In diving, Paul discovered with relief, this doesn’t normally happen, as there are two useful pieces of kit that prevent it; the first is called a depth gauge and the second is known as a compass. When, on the final dive, Paul found himself in murky water and couldn’t see the bottom or the top or the sides, when the water seemed to go on forever in all directions, he didn’t panic and he didn’t lose his way. In diving, it doesn’t really happen. But the sea isn’t the only thing you can get lost in.


Evil Uncle: Save a tree for me. but it'll have to be quick as im moving to wigan the first chance i get.

Rach: stand by for the return of the orange man. thats mmy gladiator name.

Sianodel: same same! I was going to say 'Where? Where?' but didnt think it would be that funny

Bjorgvin: hey, watch the language on my site, you bloody wanker!