Enthusiasm builds

Okay, so bear with me.

Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine spirit or by the presence of a God. In current English vernacular the word simply means intense enjoyment, interest or approval.

Enthusiasm for something also comes when you know you can do it. When the veneer of failure, of doubt and disappointment becomes stripped away and is replaced by a self belief, a knowledge that whatever happens you have it in your power to affect your life, to accomplish things you never thought you'd be able to do.

For this, I have a number of people to thank.

I was very quiet this week in the car. A part of the open water course lies in the study of the coursework presented either on dvd or in the form of a book with five chapters, each with knowledge reviews. I turned up that night with Chris to be told (by her) that I would sit my exam and get it out of the way.

Er, I hadn't finished revising yet?

Doesn't matter, she said- get it done anyway. She believed I could do it and it's a bit hard to say "no" to her when she's in that supportive frame of mind (she believes in you so much you doubt your own doubt and start to believe in yourself- which is a pretty good trait for an instructor!). Luckily I scored 45 out of 50 and with a score of 90% I passed the knowledge side. The only remaining point of fear and lay with the swim test, but more on that another time.

On the way to the pool Chris came in for an unwelcome piece of news- too many students, not enough teachers. She was preparing the scuba instructor course for Zoe, Mick T, Mick S and Balders (and I think two others) so this left me without an instructor for the night. We arrived, I got changed, and upon emerging was given a strange piece of news.

"I'm going to use you as a guinea pig tonight" Chris told me, "in the instructor course, they're not allowed to teach students so we have to take it in turns to pretend to be a student. For that reason, tonight, as we're short of instructors, you are going to be the guinea pig student for the entire group- there will be eight of us in the water, all rescue trained, so you'll be quite safe. I'll tell them to teach you a skill and grade them appropriately on how they do".

And that became the format. I had the most dedicated, professional, friendly and easy going bunch of senior dive instructors around me. Of course, Chris was teaching and grading them and not me, but it meant I could learn from each of them in turn.

First up, by my request, was the skill I'd so disastrously failed the week before- taking off and replacing the rig at the surface- and for this, she turned to Mick T.

Calm? Steady? You have no idea! This guy is incredible! From the word go, he showed me the same skill in such a straightforward, step by step fashion that when it came to my turn, the fear lessened. One of Mick T's phrases is "you learn at your own pace" and he could win awards his gentle, supportive, and evenly paced teaching style!

"Don't forget to kick like mad" Chris prompted from a short distance away. The straps came loose, the releases unclasped, and the inflated rig came off my right arm and straight underneath me. I was sat on the air cylinder and BCD in the pool and already was half way through. Sliding my arms into the straps was a little difficult but manageable and then it was up my back as I lay in the water, supported in buoyancy from underneath.

The BCD came onto my back, I fastened the releases, pulled the shoulder straps, and that was it- done, completed, and as Chris said later, I'd 'aced' the skill.

There it was- the smile- mine- the sign I'd made it and felt comfortable. Fear vanquished and all memory of failure gone- I'd beaten the fear and by not wanting to give up, conquered a little of my fear as well.

The rest of the lesson went well with me completing skills in the water as shown (although I did mess up the mask changing skill again! Kicked myself for that one, but huge thanks to Mick S for being the rock I anchored my confidence on and didn't bolt for the surface) and by the end of the lesson felt 100% better. More confident, more stable, just...better all round.

The list of people I had to thank? Every instructor there.

Damien kept a weather eye from the back, Mick R perched near a few times and watched them, Chris kept an eye on the learning instructors as well as myself, and those I was training with were brilliant.

Zoe has a very calm, methodical way of teaching.

Mick S is enthusiastic and very encouraging, and set me right when I cocked up.

For Mick T time is never an issue- and bestowing me the knowledge that I could proceed at my own time helped to banish the fear enormously.

Balders made it fun, and that also took away any trepidation.

Seriously, I know I'm plugging them, but from my point of view as a terrified non-swimmer, I was overcoming this fear with the help of these highly professional and extremely talented people week after week. I couldn't have been in safer hands.

Three days later I found a new source of encouragement, but this time in myself. Chris was running a rescue dive course in Eccleston Delph and invited me along to see what Shore cover was all about.

The Delph is a quarry filled with water and sunk with obstacles to train in. Boats, a plane, training platforms, and even a children's playground. I was put with Liam- the mad, young one I met on my try dive- Liam works with the shop and is there every pool session- he's sixteen or seventeen, over 6' tall, and does odd jobs around the place. He's permanently happy and with that has a fantastic way of calming anyone's nerves just by being himself. A bit like the rest of them, really.

Liam was showing another girl called Steph how to do Shore Cover so I watched over the shoulder to learn the basics. The principle is simple- you log in the details of the dive site, the member of the group with ultimate responsibility for the day (Chris), and the nearest hospital with dive recovery and treatment facilities (Murrayfield in Liverpool- it has a decompression chamber). Then you log in the names of the divers and check their starting air before the first dive.

With each dive you log depth, duration, and remaining air when they surface. Then you log the surface interval (the space between dives on the shore- used to deplete Nitrogen from the bloodstream, get lunch, have a brew, sleep, etc) and then record everything else for the second dive.

From what I could gather, the first part of the course (before lunch) had the three rescue students- Neil (good sense of humor), Craig- (talkative)- and Gareth- a great bloke with a quiet, wry, observational style of wit- doing rescues in the water by scenario. They weren't told what scenario they would be doing before they went in the water and had to locate and deal with any problems that arose.

The morning went well during which Chris tipped me off- "over lunch" she said, "I'm going for a dive with Liam and he's going to 'lose' me- this lot will come back from lunch to be told by Liam he has lost his buddy and they have to react appropriately. Hopefully, that means they'll scramble to find me and perform a rescue. I'm going to wait on the bottom somewhere. If they don't find me by the time I get low on air, I'm coming up and they'll fail"

Sure enough, over lunch she declares "I'm hot and going off for a dive" and disappears with Liam. By the time the rest return, Liam's surfacing and shouting out "I've lost my buddy".

Despite this being a training run and him shouting it in a quiet voice so only our group could hear, it didn't stop some other diver running for the emergency phone and being stopped by one of the group with an explanation of "Don't worry- its a diver rescue course- this is a simulation"

Apparently they had an over-enthusiastic guy the year before do the same thing- lose someone on purpose for this very reason- and shout it out so loud that half of Eccleston Delph came running! (They got it in the neck for that one!)

Gareth was straight out in snorkel and fins scanning for water bubbles and found Chris but couldn't confirm if it was her. The others, I think, were already in the water by that point and in the area. They had her up from her position in the playground and on shore soon enough but it was so shambolic they ended up running into the back edge of Mick R's tongue.

"What the bloody hell was that? Stop Mary-ing about and get back in the water! We're going again!"

Their overall response time was criticized at one point so Chris had them swim two widths of Eccleston Delph before the next test- something she's never had anyone do before- as punishment (with a smile, as she always does).

It was at this stage I was glad I was only an open water student and not anything higher! She's quite scary when she's cheerfully telling you off!

By the end of the day they had all passed. I'd browned in the sun, stood knee deep in the water with Steph for ages (it was the coolest place to be, apart from actually in the water, which I wasn't allowed to do) and even helped with a dive rescue by assisting when called upon by a scenario bringing a diver in.

Craig was playing dead for Jo, a divemaster student. She no-where near as big as Craig and asked for assistance getting him just out of the water as part of the scenario so when she called, I was three feet away. I've been a first aider for years so without stealing her thunder, I merely supported Craig's head from rocks beneath and helped to drag him to a stable position on the shoreline.

The whole day was absolutely brilliant! I wanted to dive in (despite not being able to swim very well) and enjoyed a nice kind of jealousy for them all in the water.

I wanted, more than anything, to join them at that point.

Enthusiasm was building. I felt I could make diving something personal to me, and I wasn't going to look back.