So it’s November already? Where did October go, and what’s more, where are the rest of my entries for the last month? Well, I hate to blame an inanimate substance, but you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? It was the lime that made me do it… The reason most modern builders don’t use lime mortar is that it’s tricky stuff and takes time and patience to use. I knew I only had a small window of good weather left, which meant that I had to get my pointing done before the bony hand of winter started to scratch and claw at the setting mortar. You can’t hurry lime, it has to harden in the air, which can take several days, the water has to evaporate, carbon dioxide has to be absorbed, and if frost gets into it before it’s fully hard, then the mortar will fail.

You’ll be glad to hear that it’s all finished now. I put in one, last concerted effort and reached the end of the wall; the mortar has now set hard, and the creamy lime crust has been brushed off to reveal the myriad specks of aggregate beneath. With luck, my repair work will last for a few hundred years at least, and I’m now free to sit at my desk, look out into the darkening gloom, and write something uplifting about why November is such a lovely month. It’s a bit tricky at the moment because it’s so wet and miserable; so let me transport you to sunnier climes...

I’ve just returned from Egypt, and in between the lying around and the swimming in the azure sea, I managed to fit in a bit of diving. It was touch and go as to whether I would be able to get away, because Rosie had an anxiety nightmare about my death, and said that she didn’t want me to dive. She’s going through a difficult time at the moment, having just moved up to secondary school. She’s very bright and has an extraordinarily mature outlook on life, but she’s still just a little girl who has had to take on an enormous emotional burden at a very early age. I have to be very careful with her at present, because I know that if I add to her anxiety, then I might potentially make her introverted and clingy. I understand her need for reassurance, but at the same time I know I have to let her see that if she worries about me diving, then she could equally worry about me driving on a motorway, or crossing a busy street. If you sow a seed of doubt in an adolescent mind, then you have a potential for neurosis, so the best way forward in my view was to reassure Rosie and tell her that I would be around for a long time yet. I put off my dive for a day, and that was enough to let Rosie get over her bad dream. It is important to recognise when your child is in need of comfort and reassurance, but it’s equally important to demonstrate that life must go on as normal.

Rosie doesn’t know it, but I am a super-cautious diver. I bought my own gear to negate to possibility that any hired equipment might fail, and when I dive, I make sure that I’m never more than a few feet away from the dive master.

Diving is an interesting pastime because of the opportunity it gives you to observe the character traits of different nationalities. I only dive a couple of times a year, but when I do I spend much of my time making mental notes about my companions. The Italians flock to Egypt, and are easily spotted because of their stylish attire and flagrant disregard for the wildlife. Many Italians seem happy to trample on fragile coral or harass passing turtles, much to the horror of British divers, who are much more responsible. The British are fairly nondescript, and fall into two main groups: those who don’t make a big deal about the fact they can dive, and those who want the whole world to know. But for sheer love of equipment and single-minded devotion, you have to look to the Germans. I once dived with a German couple that had so many bits and bobs strapped to them that it was hard to see how, in an emergency, they’d remember where all of the bits were. The man had a spare snorkel strapped to his thigh, two knives, whistles, a video camera, stills camera and basically everything but a Bob the Builder lunchbox – although, I think if he’d had room to strap one on, he would have done.

My first holiday romance was with a German. We met during a visit to Cornwall. He was sweet enough, blond and angular and a bit gawky, whilst I was shy and awkward and a bit frightened of going in the sea because I’d just seen ‘Jaws’ at the local cinema. We played around by the canal and built sandcastles, and it was all very innocent and joyous; until we got into an argument about the construction of a turreted sea defence. I was on the receiving end of a Teutonic tongue-lashing because of my sloppy sand-work. Franz was mean to me, and so I used the only riposte that any true English girl should employ to a beastly German - ‘Well, at least we won the war.’

His parents went puce, and my parents made me apologise for being Bude’s answer to Basil Fawlty, but later, my dad took me aside and told me that I was a good girl and that he wasn’t really cross at all. I wrote to Franz for a while after I got back home, but I never had the heart to tell him that I actually fancied his younger brother. The next year we went back to Bude, and I met a French boy who taught me how to kiss in a way that only a true French boy can. He was very sweet, and I wrote to him too, but then he sent me a cassette tape of his favourite musician and it all went a bit downhill. I didn’t have anything good to say about Jean Michel Jarre, I thought that his boring, monotonous, interminable organ recitals were the worst thing I’d ever heard, and so that was the end of our beautiful friendship. But if, by some strange chance, Monsieur Philippe Redon does just happen to be reading this, I have to say that I will always be grateful for his expert tutelage.

Sadly, I didn’t get any French action on my latest trip to Egypt, but I did get to spend a few hours in the company of a group of German divers, and that was more than enough, believe me…

Our small diving group was made up of my brother-in-law Ed, myself and two jolly German couples. Three of the Germans looked like they were already wearing inflatable suits, and the other member of their party looked liked she could do with a good meal and a decent haircut (if I say Ziggy Stardust, then you’ll get an idea of the look she was trying to achieve). One of the German men had over 800 dives under his straining belt, which made my paltry 25 dives look a bit sad, but at least I knew he’d be safe.

We were diving on a beautiful reef, and our dive master had high hopes of us seeing huge shoals of barracuda amongst the table coral, but in the end all we got to see were three huge Germans making painfully slow progress along the reef wall, followed by their spike-haired companion, who was presumably looking for things to eat.

Ed and I spent ages just floating around, waiting for the others to catch up, and at the end of the hour our dive master was completely exasperated. We only got to see a small part of the reef, whilst the other dive group had seen the barracuda shoals, along with two huge Napoleon fish.

When we got out of the water, Ed and I took off our gear and sat on a wall, letting the heat of the afternoon sun dry our skin; at which point one of the German men decided to strip off completely and towel himself dry. Now, I’m all for a man getting naked in front of me, and God knows I’ve got no reason to be choosy about whose particular portions present themselves, but in terms of sausage, this was the wurst. I wanted to look away, but I was compelled to take another sneaky peek, and then I saw it - the crowning glory, the icing on the cake, the schnitzel that topped off his wiener...

The man had put down his towel and picked up a small woollen hat, complete with earflaps. He put on the hat, and there he was, standing butt-naked in the heat of the Dahab sun, looking not unlike moustachioed elephant seal with a head cold. All of his companions put on woolly hats too, but thankfully, nobody else got naked. Ed and I just looked at each other and shook our heads in disbelief. Why did they do that? It was 35 degrees and there was no chance of catching a chill, but then German divers are a bit of an odd lot.

So, Hooray! I got to see an ugly naked man, and I got to play with my girls in the sea; we cantered Arab horses along the sand, snorkelled around coral gardens and I had the chance to relax with my family. It was a wonderful trip and we are all hoping that my lovely mother-in-law, who paid for us all to go, will make it an annual event from now on.

My girls are back to school now and I’ve just finished the last of the washing. Life is back to normal and I am sitting in my study, looking down the length of my finished wall and wondering what I’m going to do with the 80kg of lime mortar that’s left sitting in my barn. Any suggestions?


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