ISSUE 18 ARCHIVE - ROB'S WORLD: BORINGEST DIVE, IRRELEVANTEST DIVE

Rob Hunt

Given that I’ll never be famous enough or owning-my-own-dive-centre-which-I-need-to-promote enough to be offered the chance to do Best Dive, Worst Dive in this magazine, I thought I’d abuse this opportunity to steal the format and write some vaguely related nonsense anyway (see the back page of Sport Diver, c. 2008 – 2010).

Most Fortuitousest Dive

I’ve done so many fortuitous dives in my long and glittering career; it really is literally impossible to pick just one most fortuitousest dive out of them all.

My most fortuitousest dive came on Dive 4 of an Open Water course with a particularly nervous 17 year-old girl. Casting around for something to calm her nerves with, I spotted a) a big-eye squirrelfish which has a big eye; b) a barracuda which is quite a big fish; c) a pod of nine dolphins swimming towards us.

Least Fortuitousest Dive

Diving is such a wonderful experience, there really is no such thing as an unfortuitous dive.

My most unfortuitousest dive came on Dive 4 of an Open Water course with a particularly nervous 17 year-old girl. Given that she was only 17 and also a strict American Bapto-Episco-Seventh-Day-Evango- Christualist, I was unable to claim my rightful reward for the good work of the friendly pod of nine dolphins which came to greet us at the beginning of the dive.

As a pointless footnote which I couldn’t trust Fat Dan, the graphic designer, to put as an actual footnote and not eat, so it’s here instead: if you do ever find yourself attempting to pass US Immigration in a Red State whilst wearing a top with Arabic print on it because you forgot that was a crime, and the man barks “Are you a Muslim? Are you a Muslim?” 14 times in a row at you, and then you say “No. No” for the fourteenth time and then he says “What religion are you?” and you say “Christian” because you know it’s not wise to say “None” when dealing with religious psychopaths, and then he says “What kind?” and you panic because you can’t remember the term for “the sort that believe in dinosaurs”, it is as you sit in a small room surrounded by itinerant Guatemalans for 90 minutes trying to explain to an official who thinks that Egypt is a land-locked desert that the reason you spent a year there was because you were Scuba diving, that you will realise that the phrase: “Bapto-Episco-Seventh-Day-Evango-Christualist” would probably have been a more useful response to the Christian question than “The English kind” and then adding a question mark to the end of it.

Most Missing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the-2006- World-Cup-Quarter-Finalest Dive

I’ve done so many missing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the- 2006-World-Cup-quarter-final dives in my long and glittering career; it really is literally impossible to pick just one most missing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the-2006- World-Cup-quarter-finalest dive out of them all.

My most missing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the-2006- World-Cup-quarter-finalest dive probably came during the summer of 2006 and involved me attempting to teach someone seemingly genetically allergic to water how to Scuba dive. One of the days I did this coincided with England playing Portugal in the quarter final of the World Cup.

SPOILER ALERT. As another pointless footnote, hidden in the text to once again avoid the rapacious appetite of Fat Dan (you know what graphic designers are like: sugary crumbs coating their fashionably bearded mouths and chubby little fingers. And wearing all black to try and hide the consequences): If you are going to spend the day in a TV’s Likely Lad type scenario and somehow, miraculously, avoid hearing the football score before the game is replayed (at 1am, because you’re living in Canadia at the time), don’t bother because by 3.15am, when it’s all over and you have to be up at 7am to go to work, England will have lost on penalties and not only will you have been forced to watch the exact opposite of preening simpleton Cristiano Ronaldo actually crying like a little girl, you will also have put up with four and a half hours of your 19 year-old housemate trying unsuccessfully to reach second base (about 25 not out in Great Britlandish terms) with his 17 year-old girlfriend on the opposite couch.

Most Unmissing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the-2006 World-Cup-Quarter-Finalest Dive

Diving is such a wonderful experience, there really is no such thing as an unmissing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the- 2006-World-Cup-quarter-final dive.

My most unmissing-England-vs-Portugal-in-the- 2006-World-Cup-quarter-finalest dive came last year on Christmas Day, during the long winter break in international football, although I wasn’t diving at the time.