My kit box of memories

I’ve obviously messed up somewhere along the line.  I have realised over the past few months that an inherent property of my desk is to act as a dumping ground for paperwork, much of it in archaeological layers.  Time Team’s finest would have no problem interpreting activity on this site using the stratified stacks of paper.  I can usually find anything I need by reference to when I last saw it, and taking a guess at how far down the stack it might be…..the only skill required is remembering which is the right stack to start searching through… 

And it’s not just on my desk that this layering applies.  I have two kit boxes in the store room, and a kit bag that heads out to dives with me.  It is possible to retrospectively write up my dives by looking in my kit boxes at the layers.  My kit bag accumulates diving bits until it is full, and then I have a back to basics approach of emptying it all into a kit box, selecting the bits I know I need and heading off.  It is almost a certainty that when I get to the dive I need a spare compass for a trainee, a spare dSMB, a spare [insert name here of kit recently emptied out of bag into storage box].  Thus I would have been well equipped and prepared if I hadn’t been so tidy.

But I am not alone in this phenomenon.  Visiting divers to our dive centre will do just the same.  Their initial thoughts of “I’m going on a trip so I’ll clear out all the unnecessary rubbish that has accumulated in my dive bag” can be roughly translated by day 2 of their week- long trip into “I wonder if you would have a cable tie, lanyard, spanner, spare gloves, replacement hose, spare [insert name here of kit recently emptied out of bag into storage box]” when they realise that clearing out their dive bag before their trip was a mistake. 

 A dig down through my kit boxes is starting to feel a bit like one of those memory jogging exercises for people suffering from dementia.  A Morning Fresh washing up liquid bottle attached to a lanyard evokes strong memories of a Razor clam survey project.  An ice cream tub with the lid cable tied to one corner is from collecting marine critters for the Manx Wildlife Trust marine touch tanks exhibit.  A lift bag with some suspicious stains (even after soaking in disinfectant) recalls the horror of an anchor recovery from near a sewage outfall.  Perhaps that’s why my enthusiasm for clearing out my kit boxes is so low, this isn’t just dive kit, these are my diving memories in a plastic tub.

Some divers will never experience this sensation of looking back and remembering, because they are still using the same kit they have had for 20 years.  There is nothing extra in their kit bag apart from a spare tube of glue and some pieces of bicycle inner tube that will be used later in the trip for repairing yet another leak on their drysuit.  All the kit that they possess enters the water with them and will duly return with them at the end of the dive.  No spares, nothing used for strange marine surveys, wreck identification or search and recovery projects, no bits of something slowly rusting in the bottom of the bag.  I both admire and pity them in equal measure.  At the end of their diving season their kit bag will be just as tidy as ever, bereft of the memory-jogging accumulation of dive related things.

Of course there are some ‘things’ in my kit box that I could have done without.  It took me three days to trace the dead and decaying snakelocks anemone that got left in one of my sample bags.  The smell was horrendous and had permeated through the rest of my kit.  But tucked away in the corner it was no wonder that the deck crew emptying the bag had missed it, and no wonder it took me so long to locate the remaining mush.  But still, faintly smelling, that goody bag forms part of the layers in my kit box now too.
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A good friend of mine writes the most evocative and hilarious log book entries.  I confess to log book entries that record the bare minimum of detail about my diving.  Perhaps that explains my reluctance to clear up my kit.  In my kit boxes lie tales of diving adventures, moments of teaching break-throughs and innovations in marine surveys that still bring a smile to my face.  As for my desk?  It’s a heap of paperwork and I hate paperwork!