Sunday started badly and got worse. I went to the supermarket to stock up on edible pleasure for the coming week. Half way through the check out, as the teenage girl pulled each item from my basket, said what it was and how much it cost, I realized that I had left my wallet at home. I drive home, pick it up, drive back to Marudai and pay. Delightfully the folks had put my basket aside so I did not have to start from scratch but I felt asinine even so.

I go diving and somehow on the walk out to the boat I drop, I think, my mask into the sea. This is a mask with prescription glass so I can see clearly now. I search but to no avail. I go back to the house to get another. I finally set off and after feeble attempts to sail, there is no wind, I finally row out to the dive spot.  All of this is irritating.

I strap on the BCD and tank and flop over the side of the boat into the crystal water. Unfortunately I have not put on my fins. They are lying in the bottom of the Scaffie unreachable. So  I have to take off all the equipment, heave it into the boat and then heave myself in after. This is becoming increasingly difficult as my once noble body slides more towards the slack, fat end of the spectrum.

Anyway the whole point of the trip was to try out an underwater bag thing for my big Nikon SLR. The bag thing certainly looks the part and I like the idea of very high quality underwater photography. You put the camera in the bag and go through an elaborate ritual of closing such that water does not get in. I had not thought things through for the camera bag is full of air. This means extra buoyancy resulting in extreme difficulty in sinking underwater. I did not have enough weight to compensate for the rubber ring effect of the camera bag. All of this is intensely irritating.

I finally abandon the trip. I go back to the boat and try to dislodge limpets from her hull. This results in severe lacerations to the fingers of my right hand. I scramble back into the boat and row home with blood everywhere.

At home I open the camera bag. It is full of sea water. My beautiful camera has died.

I loved this camera like a very brother. But I killed it.

In the garbage.

I only have my IPhone.