word nerd vs. big blue watery thing

waddle, waddle, waddle ... kick.

"Ow!"

difficult.

waddle, waddle, stop.
hesitate ... leap ...

(1/2 a second of suspended time)

SPLASH!

ohmigod: shock of water ... cold!
salty taste ... awful.

open eyes. blue everywhere.
Yuliya nowhere.

surface. breathe.
awareness of the tide,
pushing me towards ... wait, I see legs!
found her.

ok ... swim, swim, stop. swim a bit more.
look around: girlfriend location check.

but what's ...
and the amazing swirly patterns on the rocks ...
are they really ...
and how close is it to ...

"Aaaarrgghhh!!!"

rock ... very, very sharp!

can't be more than 20cm below the surface;
can't swim over it,
can't go round it,
and now I'm on top of it.

brain dredges up long-forgotten coral references:

"knife-edged and deadly",
"slicing through human skin like razor blades" 

hands try to push away into the blue;
tide pushes back.

breathe ... push ...
ignore cuts and scratches on legs;
ignore salt in wounds;
ignore impulse to inspect the bleeding.

A quasi-haiku of reassuring self-talk:

clarity
calm, rational thoughts
push into the open sea
breathing normally
relax

off the coral now, and swimming

look down.
freak out ... abyss!
empty, blue, shadowy and vertiginous.

no way of telling
how deep ...
what lives there ...
what might suddenly appear

no escape route,
except back to the razor blade mountain.

don't panic

look for Yuliya.
ok, still there,
and seems to be enjoying
(weird)

look for boat. where's ...

whatthe   

ok: now you can panic.

"Where's the f!@#%ing boat?
The f!@#%ing boat has f!@#%ing gone! F!@#%CK!!!"

stomach turns like a pancake ...
and again, for more frying on the bottom side.

no more hai and no more ku;
just lots of pissed off noises,
and against-the-current exertions,

constricted in my ill-fitting life-jacket 
this is probably the least fun
I could have
with my pants off*.

Anthony's introduction to the Red Sea (and to snorkelling) is definitely not going well.

Twenty minutes later, back on the boat, I try to explain to The Belle why I'd had such a relentlessly awful experience in the water. The problem is, I'm not even sure myself. I mean, being dropped so close to the wall of coral certainly had something to do with it ... as did the fact that our boat pulled away from us, following people who had jumped out earlier and swum to another location.

But it was more than that. For me, the whole thing was a heart-pounding terror – the equivalent of a claustrophobe spending 20 minutes in a broken-down elevator, or a pogonophobe** being forced to wear a suit lined with stubble for a week.

I guess part of it was about the sea itself. I don't get in it very often, and every time I do, it has an effect similar to that "staring up at the night sky and feeling very tiny and insignificant" feeling. I'm aware – sometimes consciously, sometimes not – that what I'm immersed in is the biggest and most powerful thing on our planet, and it makes me realise just how small and ineffectual I am by comparison. This knowledge tends to overwhelm me a little.

Btw, this 20-minute stress-a-thon was part of a day-long excursion which included both snorkelling and diving – and the diving part (which had seemed far scarier than snorkelling when we booked the trip) was up next.

After the horridness of snorkelling, it seemed clear that there was no way I'd enjoy diving. I therefore told Yuliya that I didn't want to do it, and when we got the call to go below deck and suit up, I stayed above in the sunshine.

Here's the thing, though: with no-one else around, I was free to begin the process of talking myself into something that scared the shit out of me. I had no idea if it would work this time, but it has in the past ... especially when I've been able to add a "This may be the only time I get such an opportunity" clause to the mix.

About 10 minutes later, I joined My Belle in the lower cabin. 

Our first task was to read the waiver form. Of course the confidentiality clause prevents me from telling you exactly what was in it (and I don't remember the wording anyway), but here's the general gist:

You may die of fright. You may drown. Your arms and legs and torso and reproductive organs may end up in the digestive system of a shark. Your equipment may fail, fall off, strangle you or explode in an underwater ball of flame. You may break your back, lose your mind, throw up your spleen or bleed the entire contents of your arteries out your ears due to pressure changes. Or you may simply be sliced into julienne by the boat propellor. In all of these cases, or in the event of any other disaster our lawyers haven't dreamed up yet, our company reserves the right to say "I'm sorry, we don't know this person – they must've snuck onto our boat and stolen our equipment while we weren't looking." So it's your problem, basically.

Have a great time!

When we'd both finished reading we held our pens poised above the document, ready to add our sginatures but hesitating at the grimness of it all. I asked Yuliya "How did you feel about all of that?"

"Terrified", was her reply.

And so we signed.

I distinctly remember the song that was in my head while I was adding my scrawl to the document: it was Neuroticfish's They're Coming to Take Me Away. How appropriate.

Almost immediately after we'd signed our lives away, a nervous Yuliya was loaded up with an oxygen tank that weighed almost as much as she does, helped to her feet, and lowered into the sea. On her way in she bruised her elbow rather badly. Then she disappeared beneath the surface. I tried to relax.

(Ha ... like that was going to happen!)

Half an hour later she was back, telling me how incredible the experience had been. And then it was my turn.

Tank on, wetsuit on, mask on.
Off the boat, into the water next to the instructor.

Instructor says "go under the water and breathe".
I try. The panic returns. I surface.

"Try again. Hold the oxygen tightly in your mouth."

I do as he says. Same panic.

"You're not doing as I say!"

He was wrong; there was some other problem. I couldn't quite work it out, but something was making me see red every time I went beneath the surface. I could breathe from the tank, but my heart started racing each time I took a breath, and I had this feeling that I couldn't get the whole action to work ... like the first time you get behind the wheel of a car, and there seem to be far too many things to think about at once.

"You have to listen to me!",

he says.

"I am listening, but something else is wrong. Just a second ... I'll try one more time."

Down into the blue again, and ... wait, got it!

I came up and adjusted my mask, which I'd suddenly realised had been jammed against my nostrils the whole time, making it impossible to breathe out through my nose.

The adjustment couldn't have been more than a few millimetres, but when I went under the fourth time, everything was absolutely fine ... oxygen ok, heart ok, panic levels pretty close to absolute zero.

So that had been the problem all along ... so simple! And the same for snorkelling: the panic had been my unconscious reaction to something that hadn't even registered in my conscious mind – i.e. that my nasal passage was being forced closed. And that's all.

With that sorted, we did the other pre-flight tests, and then the instructor deflated my buoyancy vest and I began to sink. And then to swim very gently.

I looked down. There was the void again, as deep and almost-limitless as before, but this time I couldn't take my eyes off it (whereas before I couldn't look for more than half a second without the fear taking hold).

As we descended, the instructor kept checking that I was ok with pressure and so on, and gently guiding me down towards the seabed. I was transfixed. Not the most original metaphor, I know, but at times I really felt as though I was flying in slow motion over the surface of an alien world. I could see valleys, country roads, little mountain ranges, and other geographical features which we don't have on our planet.

The beauty of it all was just absolutely mind-bending.

A few minutes later we were almost at the bottom, and I was still staring straight down in complete wonder. Suddenly the instructor pointed ahead. I looked up, realising I'd been so intent on the seabed that it hadn't occurred to me that this was a 3-D environment ... I could look in any direction I wanted. Stupid first-timer!

Then it became apparent why the instructor had chosen that particular moment to make his pointing motions: we were approaching, and in fact almost touching, a vertical underwater cliff. It was a coral city! Lots of fish winding between rocky outcrops, plants waving about softly, and so on and so forth. This was just magical.

We swam around the base of the cliff for a minute or two, then headed out onto the sea floor, ascending and descending slightly to get over ridges of coral growing on the bottom. I was truly stunned at this point ... everywhere I looked was life, and lots of it.

The whole dive lasted for about 25 minutes, and after heaving myself back onto the boat I had one thing to say to Yuliya: "How soon can we go again?"

Before we headed back to Sharm, we snorkelled again – this time in calm waters that were absolutely teeming with fish. You'd literally stick your head under the surface and find them swimming beside your cheek ... or you'd look down and see a whole school of colourful, sucker-mouthed aquatic folk passing beneath you, with some sword-shaped companions in tow. No fear this time ... just a sense of "Wow, this is frikkin' unbelievable!"

And then, as I was preparing boarding the boat for the final time, someone shouted "Jelly!" The implication was that we couldn't get back to the boat without risking a jellyfish sting, 'cause there was one hanging around near the ladder. I stayed at a safe distance, treading water; stuck my head under water for a second, and saw another jelly about six inches away from my face. Went "Aaaaaah!", tried to paddle away from it, and actually touched the damn thing with my hand.

Uh-oh ... poison time!

But nothing happened. No pain, no paralysis, no poisoned hands of death closing around my heart. No change at all.

I was then joined by an Egyptian guy who I'd met earlier in the day. He asked why I was here doing essentially nothing, and I said "There's a jellyfish over there, and we're waiting for it to move away from the boat. There's one around here somewhere too".

"Like this one?", he said.

"Er ... yeah."

By "this one", he meant the jelly that he was now holding in his hand (probably the same one I'd touched a minute eaerlier). He'd picked it up in his palm, turning it upside down so that the creature's outer 'umbrella' flopped over the sides of his hand, and its insides were visible.

"Don't worry", he said cheerfully. "They're not dangerous."

Apparently not. Hmmm ... that's certainly one difference between Australia and Egypt that I hadn't anticipated!

Heading back to Sharm el-Sheikh, I felt contented and reflective: this had been an amazing day. It's not often that you get to discover a whole new kind of physical environment that you've never seen before, whilst overcoming a blinding fear at the same time. All in all, I'd say it was worth the airfare by itself. And it definitely won't be the last time I venture under the sea. Stay tuned for more fishy adventures ...

:-)



* Many years ago I had a colleague called Odette who was very fond of the expression "It's the most fun you can have with your pants on!". I always found it quite amusing ... hence the desire to 'flip the phrase over' when describing a horrible experience which entailed me wearing only bathers.

(A ridiculous footnote, if ever there was one!)   

** pogonophobia = fear of beards. (Margaret Thatcher was apparently a pogonophobe, and wouldn't let any of the ministers in her cabinet grow facial hair.)