The last time I included any members of my family in a group email, it was to let the universe know that I was about to watch the 2006 World Cup. All of it. In Central America. My diving services were no longer required (by Satan herself) in Nicaragua and I didn't have enough money to return home to Blighty and the inevitable ticker-tape parade that one expects after three months out of the country. And I knew that this time, England were actually going to win the World Cup. So I was going to watch it all unfold through a month-long alcoholic haze somewhere around Guatemala.

Unfortunately, in this email, which I had drunkenly sent to a somewhat eclectic selection of contacts in my address-book, including ex-girlfriends, ex-bosses, bank managers etc., I mentioned as an off-hand joke at the end, that if anyone had any ideas as to what I could do for the rest of my life, then I'd be receptive to any suggestions.

My brother did a "Reply-all" with something a bit too sensible, but I think he got away with it.

My mother composed a one sentence response to him, which was: "For God's sake, let's get him home."

Unfortunately, being new to the interweb or "information superhighway" as she was calling it at the time, and not understanding what all these new-fangled buttons do on the computer, she too hit "Reply-all" and the message went out to everyone on the original list. To this day, I have several friends who insist on bringing this episode up in spasms of laughter every time I see them. Every. Single. Time.

Like I said, it was the last time I included any members of my family in a group email.

I only mention this because I find myself in a similar situation now in Melbourne. See the metaphor, above-left. And the cricket World Cup approaches.

I'm bored of creating places for words and pictures to live on the information superhighway, so if anyone has any ideas as to what I could do for the rest of my life, then I'd be receptive to any suggestions. Cheers.

I will say this, though: Given that muck diving is all about looking at tiny things in the sand that are incredibly well camouflaged, and since this is something that becomes exponentially more difficult to do in a strong current; perhaps such dives aren't the best place for newly qualified open water divers whose general idea of buoyancy is that "this button makes you go up, yes?"

As one diver kept smashing through the sand, power-inflating their BCD and rocketing toward the surface, then dumping all their air and smashing down into the sand / whatever it was I was trying to get a shot of again, before rolling around for a bit onto their back like a particularly graceless cockroach, I had pause to internally debate the corporal / capital punishment question.

When the divemaster gave up trying to point out the tiny interesting stuff and instead vaguely pointed towards turtles (Sipadan and the nearby island are infested with turtles) and morays for the rest of the dive, I realised that the latter option was, if anything, too liberal. The dynamite fishermen we heard and felt blasting the reef to pieces during the safety stop of the first dive that day clearly agreed with me.

Anyway, that's a grey reef shark above and more pics will follow. I suggest getting to Sipadan while you can because with the combined efforts of the diver and fisherman above, in a couple of years time there'll be nothing left to look at.

I've always been a person that's happy to allow people near their feet; on some occasions I've even let folk as close as three or four metres without physically attacking them with a grappling hook I keep about my person for that very purpose. Which is why I was more than happy to visit a "fish spa" in Singapore on New Year's Eve.

At a fish spa, you dip your feet into a tank of water and hundreds of tiny little fish come and eat the tiny little bits of dead skin on your tiny little feet with their tiny little teeth. It lasts for about 30 minutes. I squealed like a little girl for about 30 minutes. I don't know why I wasn't asked to leave.

The same could be said for the evening do. We went to the most expensive restaurant I've ever seen on the waterfront and ate reight posh and that. Which means I ate bits of miniature beans and watched everyone else eat obscure bits of animals. The sort of bits not even the animal would miss, probably. Who even knew geese had livers? The most important thing I learned is that a truffle is a kind of incredibly expensive mushroom. I ate one. It tasted like a mushroom. The best bit was when a waitery type came over to discuss the vegetarian options for the fifth (yes, 5th) course:

Him: You are vegetarian, yes?

Me: I am vegetarian, yes.

Him: For the fifth course we have suckling pig.

Me: I am vegetarian.

Him: Yes. Is suckling pig OK for you?

Me: Does it have meat in it, this suckling pig?

Him: Yes.

Me: I am vegetarian.

Him: Yes.

It may surprise any readers of this to learn that after that I took advantage of it being New Year's Eve by getting drunk on a rooftop. Marina made me leave before I stripped off and jumped in the pool because she's a girl and girl's have little or no understanding of hilarity. Plus she wasn't as drunk as me.

A round of drinks was $126. Today I'm celebrating my bankruptcy by flying to Borneo.

Happy New Year.

Incredibly for someone as dull as myself, I went near some water recently, and here's the proof.

I apologise for the quality of the commentary. Australians, it seems, when confronted by this kind of thing are driven toward the most tedious of ejaculations like: "Look. A seal" and "Hello", rather than spontaneously resolving the dichotomy between general relativity and quantum mechanics, for example.

Actually, it sounds like whoever said "Hello" was a Pom(mie). Sickening.

The day before yesterday, I appeared as a contestant on the Australian version of Countdown.

It's called Letters and Numbers over here, despite being identical to the point where it even seems to have the reincarnation of Richard Whiteley on it, and my performance would best be described as an anagram of this. No, not hits.

Strange day. They film five episodes at once and I was the fourth contestant, so I'd had seven hours of nervous adrenaline before it was my go. My other excuse is that the clever girl what does the numbers and that was quite hot and nearly looked at me once so I could tell she fancied me. She can't spell though.

Neither, it transpires, can I.

Anyway, the bloke I matched up against was on his fifth episode and he had a little beard I didn't like. As if that wasn't enough, he decided to get all fancy in the first round with a seven letter word which, the mathematically inclined will be forced to notice, is one better than the six letter word I was rather proud of. What's wrong with these people?

I was preoccupied with fulfilling a lifetime ambition to spell out a swearword via the judicious selection of consonants and vowels when it was my turn to pick the letters. Sadly, the closest I got was accidentally spelling "gunt" with the last four letters and we had to refilm that bit and swap the n and t around for myopic viewers unable to view an uppercase G correctly.

The hirsutic didn't win another round. "Take that, beardo!", I yelled, as he scuttled away crying having gotten the conundrum wrong at the end, in much the same way that you would expect of someone that can't even manage such a basic task as checking that the nine letters they've rearranged in their head are correct before pressing a buzzer.

I got to sit in the champion's seat after that because I was a champion and it was the only appropriate place for one such as I. A champion. Championing over those around me.

Next up was another Pomme who I'd been hanging out with all day. He was a nice kid; beardless, if you will, but his major problem was that he was much better at the game than me.

Fortunately, he was extremely nervous. "I expect you're very nervous", I said, by way of calming him down, "what with it being your first time on TV, playing against a seasoned professional and vanquisher of Beardo".

We were neck and neck for a round or two. Then he won a round. "You're sitting in your seat wrong", I told him, but it didn't help because he won the next round as well.

A common practice in any household containing me, is for someone (me) to shout "You f****** t***" at the TV during Countdown when a contestant does something retarded like use one letter twice. In fact, I could hear myself shouting those words from six months in the future when the show will be aired, as I declared I had made the word "rebrand" despite there being only one "r".

I was soon 20 points behind and desperate. Inexplicably, my co-contestant (The Enemy) managed to make a couple of errors himself, so we went into the final Conundrum with me four points behind.

In times of stress I find it's always best to panic. I saw the word "migrating" in the conundrum. Clearly The Enemy would see it too, my brain squealed, and it was imperative that I press the buzzer before him. No time to check if I'd got it right.

"Migrating" doesn't have an "o" in it. The conundrum did though. Five seconds later The Enemy buzzed in with "migration". Perhaps we had a laugh about that later, what with us both being Pommes, I don't remember. I was too busy mentally self-harming over my inability to deal with stress and the fact I didn't even manage to spell out "tits" with my letter selections.

I'm fairly sure it's the worst thing that's happened in human history. I did win a dictionary, though.

I did a thing, finally, it was by accident though. I went hard-hat diving.

I believe this is what happens when you combine hanging out with chamber technicians with not having The Ordnance (one of the cheapest pubs in London) five minutes walk away.

Officially I only went along to take pictures but after convincing the man who made the rig that I was a competent diver (despite being a flimsy PADI instructor), coupled with a spot of gastroenteritis on behalf of one of the intended participants, I got to cover myself in metal and step gracefully beneath the waves.

The last bit's a lie, obviously. Well, not the metal bit. There's an awful lot of that. Brass and copper on the helmet and neck attachment thing (to give it its technical name), huge lead weights around the waist and big lead boots. It's quite heavy. Really quite heavy.

I'd heard once that if you fall over, out of the water, in one of these suits you've no chance of getting back up again on your own. If I'd been stupid enough to fall over I'd probably be able to confirm that was true. If, say, I'd come back up the ladder after the dive and tried to take the last two steps in one go, tripped and swung round onto my back, to find myself very much pinned to the floor like an especially feeble cockroach, then I'd be able to confirm that rumour.

I can't, of course, which the picture's I'll be posting under this entry as and when I get them will prove.

Anyway, there's only two bits of advice I have for you if you ever give hard-hat diving a go. Firstly, don't try to prove how you're a natural at something you've never tried before by using just a tiny amount of air, because what will happen very quickly is that you start to blackout on the seabed from a carbon dioxide hit and then if you decide you ever want to get those 14 remaining stars on Super Mario Galaxy 2 or finish off the last two series of The Wire, or do whatever else it is people like to do (look at trees etc.) you'll have to turn up the airflow to the maximum and take a moment to recover forcing everyone on the surface to call you a twat and then have to apologise to Marina for calling you a twat, which means she then has to say that's OK, she knows it better than anyone.

The second bit of advice is not to attempt to deflect embrarrassment for trying to be macho with the air by trying to be macho with getting out of the water at the end by missing steps on the ladder because you'll fall over on your back and resemble an especially feeble cockroach until someone rescues you.

Awesome experience, though. Like being underwater with a goldfish bowl on your head yet dry at the same time. Or on the moon with a goldfish bowl on your head, except the moon's covered with water and you're dry at the same time and not popping. Or in your lounge with a goldfish bowl on your head except...

England are the worst team in the history of football and are even less skilful than in the olden days of footballing yore when 9,000 men would beat each other to death in order to attempt to transfer a piece of rock from one Godforsaken Midlands village to another and no one ever scored a goal and the kit was rudimentary at best and the Nike adverts were, well, they were still very far removed from having anything at all to do with the game but Wayne Rooney looked fit.

And I still have to get up at 4.30am to watch the games. Fortunately, Marina gets up and watches them too.

Things I like to do whilst watching the game:

Watch the game whilst breathing through my mouth and drooling slightly.

Swear.

Things Marina likes to do whilst watching the game:

Flick through a magazine.

Fidget.

Paint toenails (normally her own and usually ones still attached to her toes).

Make tea.

Ask me if I want tea (I don't).

Get up.

Sit down again.

Fidget.

Ask me which one is England.

Put a (there's no "you" in Qantas) Socceroos flag in front of the TV.

Quiz me with regard to the status of the gas bill.

Ask me if David Beckham's playing.

Tell me that David Beckham is handsome.

Move her legs around a bit.

Inspect her thumbnails.

Make another cup of tea.

Ask me if I want a cup of tea (I don't drink tea).

Ask me who's winning.

Check Facebook.

Tell me what people are up to on Facebook.

Ask me if I'm friends with Mat on Facebook (I am).

Tell me to stop swearing.

Fidget.

Ask me why England haven't "kicked a goal".

Ask me why David Beckham's wearing a suit.

Tell me that David Beckham is handsome.

Ask me if I'm being quiet because I'm in a mood with her.

Fidget.

Remind me to buy cheese the following afternoon.

Sigh.

Poke me with a finger and ask me if that's annoying.

Request quantification on a scale of one to ten as to how annoying it is when she pokes me with a finger.

Ask me how long's left.

Ask me why the England keeper let the ball go into his own net when his job is to stop the ball from going into his own net.

Consider purchasing shoes.

Discuss shoe purchasing options with me.

Ask me if we can afford new shoes.

Ask me why not.

Declare shoes will be purchased regardless.

Check toenails are dry.

Get up.

Sit down.

Fidget.

Fall asleep.

All of the above.

Right, given that my current existence is devoted to the World Cup and that I am forced vampirically to sit up all night to watch it, this post is likely to be a bit light on all that "divey stuff".

Being somewhat stranded from the England hype over here (but slap-bang in the middle of the "we didn't deserve to lose 4-0" hype; which is true, incidentally, as 6-0 would have been a much fairer result), I was a bit surprised at the outpourings of vitriol on the Grauniad website following the 1-1, particularly as I thought we were going to lose (2-0 to be precise. Goodbye $5; I could have nearly bought a can of Coke with that).

So let me tell you this: I've watched that game twice now, once at 4.30am and the repeat the next day at 2am, and not only was I sober both times, but England weren't that bad. No, honestly, they weren't. Yes, the USA were awful, but so were Holland, Italy and France (obviously).

As for the Septics' goal, given that for the first half Steven Gerrard seemed to be playing every position on the pitch on his own, we should probably blame him for the goalkeeping error. Mind you, if I was him, I'd have refused to play and taken the ball home with me ages before that. Maybe I'd have pinched Jamie Carragher's walking stick and burst his colostomy bag on the way, just to make sure the only man further out of touch with the game than Nike ("Write Your Own Slogan"), could take no further part.

Anyway, before anyone tries to dispute this here anti-Englishness, I call my first and only witness, the Giant Scotsman (guardian of Clarabel, the Kitler from Post #54). For many years, said Giant has proclaimed that if he were granted one wish and one wish only, it would be for the single use of a time machine that he might go back to Wembley in 1966 and take the place of the Russian linesman, declaring Hurst's famous effort to have not crossed the line.

He said this after the game: "I thought England were alright".

I rest my case.

I have no idea why I get so excited before major international football competitions involving England, since my lasting memory of all of them is bitter anguish when we go out.

This feeling is reasonably well illustrated from the accompanying photo, although it was actually taken two or three days before England went out to Evil Cristiano Ronaldo and cohorts in 2006.

Incidentally, the picture was sent via a comment on this here very blog by Jason, whom I taught to dive in Canada, and his wife Melissa, whom I taught until she threatened to call the Mounties to investigate my visa status if I made her take her mask off in 12 degree water again. The Mounties take a very dim view of such things, if memory serves, and are often to be seen wading into the Skookumchuck Rapids on mooseback and whacking itinerant Limey's in the nuts with ice-hockey sticks.

Note to self: remember to complete the set by shoehorning Labatts and maple syrup into next tawdry Canadian stereotype.

Anyway, in the four years since the photo was taken, Jason and Melissa now own their own dive shop, Silver Divers, whereas I spend my days shivering in front of a laptop, wrapped in a sex-pest-style dressing-gown and fur blanket, breaking up the monotony of nicotine gum with the occasional cigarette and hangover.

Rob Soutar, seen here driving the boat, is the owner of the dive school I was at and also about my age. He didn't assure me when I left that if he ever needed anyone to once again teach the Canadian people how to swear properly, he would give me a call, although I'm sure he meant to. I'm still waiting.

Looking on the bright side, David Beckham is six weeks older than me, and what's he ever achieved?

So, my greatest fear at the moment, apart from having my head pop right off due to a BP of 180/110, is losing to Australia in the knockout stages. I went to see them play New Zealand the other day where, typically, they scored the winner with literally the last kick of the game and crowed about it afterwards for 44 years. The most irritating thing about it though was the enormous banner proclaiming "Good Luck Qantas Socceroos", which misappropriation by a soulless corporate entity almost had me handing in my Australian visa except I don't have one yet.

Bizarrely, the Kiwis were all very pleased with themselves for only losing 2-1, which isn't an attitude you read often in the Daily Nazi Mail.

Anyway, come on you Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation England.

I got thrown out of my visa medical today.

It was going quite well, really, until I arrived.

I'd managed to sneak around the flat without waking Marina up and got myself to the centre of town without any complications, found the building, found the office on the fourth floor and then realised I'd left my passport at home.

So, I had to call Marina. I pointed out that I had been very quiet until the phone call, but I think she's one of these "every silver lining has a cloud" sort of people.

Anyway, in the medical office there was a bit of filling in form action coupled with a bit of being barked followed by some sitting around. Then things hotted up as I got to wee in a cup (not sure if I've done that sober before), lose some blood and have high-energy photons fired through my chest cavity.

Difficult to keep up with the high octane action in this blog sometimes.

The real excitement, though, started when I got examined by the doctor. The thing is, if you want to receive a high blood pressure reading, the best time to do it is whilst you're sitting in your pants and the female doctor's just punched you in the nob by accident (so she says).

Dr Olivetti The Shaman Firth take note. If you then want to get an even higher blood pressure reading from the patient, just tell them you're redoing it because the first one was too high. Then look at the reading for the second one with visible concern and say "I'm afraid we're going to have to do this one more time".

Apparently, the third one was, in her words, "a record". I asked her what the prize was. She said it was the immediate termination of the medical and I wasn't allowed to leave until I'd found a GP to see me that day. She also advised against any activity that didn't involve lying down completely motionless. She should've taken my blood pressure again then, really, if she wanted to see the last record smashed.

I had to walk home anyway, because Marina wouldn't answer her phone to me. Later, she said the news made her hypertensive but to be honest, that's not a competition she's going to win.