No sooner are we back from one holiday than we are, in a somewhat confusing manner, happily told about another. Rumour has it that we only have 12 working days in December, so I’m expecting more news soon about holidays for which everyone has already booked their flights and hotels but doesn’t know about yet.
I began driving last week. My lovely and HUGE Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara (wrong desert) is on the road. It’s big enough to do a wheel-off with a Nissan Armada. My first trip from Car World to home was hair raising, adrenalin producing, nerve wracking and involved me creeping along behind H with no idea where I was going or even what I was doing (I was finding out about automatic cars through experiential learning), until we were split up on a roundabout by a drinking water lorry in the fast lane of a roundabout. This happens because drinking water lorries are the slowest vehicles on the road. This means that when they’re on a roundabout all cars attempt to overtake them. Roundabout lanes are treated by some as overtaking lanes (you can overtake from either side) and only by the very few as a system through which cars feed off out from the middle to the edge to the exit as they revolve. It’s quite common for two cars in parallel lanes entering the roundabout to be aiming for the inner ring at the same time just as someone continues to circle the entire roundabout in the outside lane, thus foxing the person in the middle lane who was wanting to turn off. This system was more taxing than learning how to drive an automatic. I let H go on ahead and hid behind the drinking water lorry, with the logic that it could take the impact and I’d only get a wash.
I did arrive home. Not sure how though.
And yet the next day in the calm and light of the morning I found myself metamorphed into an insect … no sorry I had suddenly become one of the fastest thing on the roads, zinging through roundabouts in a weaving fashion and burning off Emiratis (who didn’t know that it was a white woman cutting them up because I’ve got tinted windows). I must have some Arab blood in me.
And so it was with diving. Driving and diving both being activities that I’ve dreaded and loved.
In the recent first Eid holiday H and I booked in to achieve our Advanced Open Water Certificate out at Khor Fakkan (say this with a Bristol accent) on the NE coast of the UAE. H obtained his Advanced with full marks having successfully navigated underwater, gone to a wreck, gone diving in the dark, perfected his bouyancy and GONE DOWN TO 30 METRES.
Unfortunately on the first dive I inched myself down the line at the back, saw the others zoom off ahead, forgot to calm myself, breathe and blow air into my mask to stop it squeezing my head, had a panic of discomfort and not liking not breathing through my nose, which turned into a full blown anxiety attack. My chest tightened and I felt that I couldn’t breathe and after some charade-like gesturing to the instructor, I had to go up.
So my first dive was 1 minute long and I spent the other 49 minutes up on the boat, weeping and waiting for the others to surface. The Malaysian boat driver did his monosyllabic and smiling best to cheer me up and feed me oranges, but all I could do was feel scared at the unnatural act of being 10 metres underwater. When we got back to the beach three large hairy diving instructors took turns in persuading (strong arming / coaxing / hoodwinking) me back into the water. I adamantly refused to do such an ill-advised act.
So of course I lost that argument and found myself back on the boat with a tank on. I fell in to the water and limpet-ed myself to the instructor. I hated every minute and asked myself what the point was. And thereupon they made me go down again. On the second dive the instructor reassured me that I would see fish, which I believe to be the whole point of the exercise, and then at the bottom just unilaterally and without debate, sent me off swimming alongside some bloke I didn’t know, looking at Nemo fish. I quite enjoyed myself. We were only 3 metres deep. So with a smile on my face the instructors enlisted me in the night dive. Diving in the dark? Isn’t the point to be able to see? I then realised that I conceived of ‘underwater’ as already the absence of day, so night would make no difference. Off I went.
We were each given two torches to shine at a wreck. In the night different fish are about. When seen through brilliant light, rather than residual sunlight, the true colours of the reef can be seen. All around me was a reddish sea-fishy wonderland. I was holding on to the instructor for grim death (we were at 24 metres) but I was aware enough to see H’s wedding ring on the seabed. Phew.
Finally I relaxed; focusing on the fish and not the concept of water calms me down. We went back to the same wreck the next day and I loved every minute just bobbing about looking at the strange creatures and suspending myself in the water like in a womb. All sorts of fish, from cuttle fish to rays, lion fish, all sorts of coloured fish, eels and even turtles and seahorses.
I didn’t get my Advanced Diver. It will take me a few more months worth of ‘walk in the park’ dives first before I’m going THAT deep. I’m glad to have seen the fish. I don’t really care about the badge.
Next: more on the Oman journey we made in the following days. Now I have to go and teach.
Ramadan is over and the girls are eating again. What a difference a bar of chocolate makes. Classes are quite lively. An additional change is that as the girls become more familiar with me their black dress-coats and head covers (abaya and shayla) are are loosening, slipping or being removed. And they’re also becoming more colourful. It’s nice to see the person and the expressions, this being important if I am to identify their confusion, thinking, amusement, questions and ideas.
