Confessions of an NDP
As I write I am watching my Significant Other and friends sail off around the French coast for the morning.
No we haven’t had a row. He’s diving and I happily waved him off. A few years ago he decided to take up scuba diving, and very pleased I am too.
He began because our friend and my business partner, Lesley, wanted to do it. I wasn’t interested because as someone who grew up swimming off the beautiful Gower Peninsular in South Wales I didn’t see the point in getting dressed up in rubber just to go for a swim. Doug and Lesley were soft born and bred Londoners, not hardened sea swimmers from Swansea!
Naturally there is far more to it than that but when I go snorkelling I follow the divers’ progress below me and very often see almost as much as they do but without the hassle.
The divers were excited about seeing an octopus staring at them from its hidey hole in a rock. This snorkeller spent 15 following an octopus slowly moving around over rocks investigating what it could find…Fascinating.
The divers were excited about seeing a nudibranch (I have to admit I’ll never see one without diving) but on one occasion I had been swimming with a shoal of squid glistening silver to gold in the afternoon sun.
The best thing about S.O taking up diving? Non Dive Partners as we are referred to are sometimes pitied by the neoprened ones but while they spend 15 minutes kitting up I throw on a t-shirt so my back doesn’t burn, pull on my flippers (please note divers these are not fins, you’re not fish), put on snorkel and mask and lo, 3 minutes later I’m in the sea. With an infinite supply of oxygen and no decompression to worry about I can stay in as long as I choose usually until a prune looks less wrinkled than me.
The second best thing about S.O taking up diving? The holidays in places I wouldn’t ordinarily go to.
Dahab in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt with our side trip to Mount Sinai and St Catherine’s monastery (can I say I was a little disappointed that the bush wasn’t still burning!). Collioure in the South of France which if I can work out how to upload the photo you can see from the view from our apartment is very pretty. Later this summer we’re off to Anglesey where I shall have to pretend to be English and not from South Wales (vast generalisation follows – they think we let the English walk over us; we think they sound, as one of my Welsh friends put it, like hamsters on speed. I might not mention that when I visit). Later there’s a week in Skye. Ok I have to admit the likelihood of me swimming in the Atlantic Ocean is low but I will be checking out the beautiful countryside.
Another bonus are the weekends. He disappears to look at some wreck or other and I have the house to myself. The girls come round and we watch films, chat for hours have meat feasts (S.O is a vegetarian) or I make sure it’s not my turn to answer the cushion the impact phones and spend a whole day by myself not talking to anyone, bliss after a busy week.
So don’t feel sorry for me as all alone I sip my fresh orange juice and eat my croissant overlooking a lovely harbour. I love it.
