ISSUE 22 ARCHIVE - ROB'S WORLD

Rob Hunt

How to woo¹ your buddy at 18m

Last month I went on a dive trip, and my allotted buddy was all five of the things that I am not: beautiful, intelligent, amusing, female and Swiss. Me-Last-Month, being single, instantly recognised the potential of the situation. Fortunately, Me-Last-Month is famous for his ways with the womens, and thus, with absolutely no delay, began doing nothing. Incredibly, in spite of this bold and decisive action, Me-Now is single.

What Me-Last-Month needed is the following Indispensible Guide to Courtship at 0.003 Leagues Under the Sea, which comes with guaranteed results² or your money back:

1) Show some sophistication

If your dive site offers a full dinner service, order a wine from towards the bottom of the menu, and stick your finger out whilst drinking it. In the event that a full dinner service is not offered (because the site is underwater, for example) and you have to make do with sandwiches, opt for a posh one with avocado on it.

2) Don’t tell your buddy that you’re having a wee

The international sign for having a wee underwater is to extend your little finger and wiggle it. Don’t do this. Especially if you’re wearing a drysuit.

3) Start a fight

The animal kingdom (that includes you) is filled with examples of creatures violently attacking one another, not just because it’s funny, but in order to win the affection of a third party. When your dive guide asks your buddy how much air they have remaining, you should punch them for looking at your bird / bloke. In the absence of a guide, try breaking a squid’s legs or lobbing a spare weight at some coral.

4) Do a funny

Funny things include, and are entirely limited to: stealing someone’s mask; power-inflating someone’s BCD in an overhead environment; weeing in your drysuit; eating nudibranchs.

5) Follow the example of the cuttlefish

Cuttlefish generate a stunning visual display by cycling their skin through a bewildering kaleidoscope of colours and textures to beguile and enchant a potential mate. Do that.

6) Eliminate the competition

The competition includes all divers, non-divers, and don’t knows. In my case it includes all other lifeforms as well. And probably inanimate objects. Have the dive site cleared of all these items prior to the dive.

7) Art

Artistic pursuits attract romance in the same way that Donald Trump³ attracts twats. During the safety stop, get a slate and draw your buddy “like one of your French girls”. Regardless of your buddy’s gender, the drawing should be a stick figure with massive tits.

8) Dive naked

Impossible for this not to work. Impossible.

9) Show off

Going deepest, swimming fastest, handstands, kung fu, breakdancing: the choices are endless and can only end in success. I once heard of a guy (definitely not me) who was so cool he head-butted a non-stinging jellyfish in the Red Sea to impress a girl, and although I don’t know for sure because it definitely wasn’t me, I reckon it would’ve worked out pretty well for him.⁴

10) Selflessly defend your buddy from attack by megalodon

The hard part of this one is going to be finding a megalodon as they’ve been extinct for over 2.5 million years. As for the defending bit, I’d suggest swimming in between it and your buddy, although this has the obvious downside of certainly resulting in your own death.

Obvious, really. Me-Last-Month is an idiot.

¹Woo is the second most common three-letter word beginning with w and ending with two vowels in this column.

²It is guaranteed that following all the steps will result in something happening. You will, for example, have followed all of the steps.

³Donald Trump’s surname is Trump. Am I the only person that’s noticed this?

⁴Possibly it didn’t work out pretty well because she didn’t notice it happening. And she was over the age of five. And it turned out I’d misidentified the jellyfish, so it really stung a lot and I had to run into the bathroom and wee on my own face after the dive because there was no vinegar on the boat.