Farnes Trip - September 2000

A week before this year's Farne Island trip, the fuel crisis hit Britain and there was a real chance that the trip might have to be cancelled. I'd waited a long time for this weekend and was not happy at the prospect of having to stay at home thinking about what might have been. Fortunately our skipper, Ian Douglas, assured us that, if we could scrape enough petrol together to get up there, he would somehow get hold of enough petrol to get us home. So off we went.

The first day started promisingly enough. We all got down to the boat on time, loaded up our 12 sets of gear (plus 12 extra cylinders for the second dive), jumped on board and set off. Two minutes later we were all frantically moving our kit as close to the bow as possible, and Ian was bringing The Sovereign back in before she sank.

The previous day Ian had had a new exhaust fitted and the fitter had forgotten to re-connect one section of it, leaving a lovely little hole for the water to come in. We made it back to port safely, thanks to Ian's quick thinking, but had to wait for a few hours whilst he patched up the hole. 

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally set off for our first dive site - Blue caps. This was billed as a seal dive and we were not disappointed. As soon as we entered the water there were seals all around us. One took an instant liking to Vic and proceeded to nibble at his fins. After a few minutes it found them a little too rubbery, so it progressed up to his ankle. Vic's ankle was a bit bony, so the seal moved up to his leg. His leg was too tough, so the seal moved up to his bottom. Vic's bottom was just right, so the seal decided to hang around for a good old chomp - until Vic farted. Elsewhere in the water, Tony was forming a relationship of his own. One of the seals decided that Tony's right leg was a really sexy looking piece of blubber and proceeded to mount him. After molesting his leg, she (or was it a he) decided to explore other parts of Tony's body; they ended the dive together and surfaced in each other's arms. How sweet! 

All of the dives that weekend were brilliant. There was so much marine life about, yet everything seemed to be mating. There were velvet swimming crabs at it everywhere; even the starfish seemed to be indulging in what appeared to be massive orgies.

It was a very eventful weekend, and not just from a diving point of view. 

Vic managed to produce some of the most disgusting farts known to man; the vile stench even managed to seep through the walls of the B&B, almost making the girls in the room next door physically sick. As if that wasn't torturous enough, every night Margaret and I were forced to listen to the tumultuous sound of four drunken men snoring. Farting and snoring, snoring and farting - even if we were somehow able to ignore the noise and get some sleep, there was no guarantee that we would be alive in the morning.

Continuing with the distasteful theme, someone, who shall remain nameless, actually snogged a singing, rubber fish in the middle of a pub. One night we were introduced to a plastic fish mounted on a plaque. 'Sid the Singing Salmon' sang 'Please release me, let me go'. He would turn his head to look out at the audience, whilst his thick, perfectly formed rubber lips tantalisingly mouthed the words to his song. After watching those lips and having downed a few G&Ts, one member of the group waited until Sid's head turned towards hers and then proceeded to give him a right good tonguing. Her technique couldn't have been very good though, because Sid just carried on singing as if nothing had happened. This sad individual that goes round snogging rubber fish in public houses will not be named, however, because I am the editor. I decide what goes in Going Down, I decide who shall or shall not be humiliated; nobody and I mean nobody will EVER make me admit that it was I who stuck the tongue in - so there.