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Guy Grieve is delighted that his son has decided to discover just how lovely the water can be by learning to dive
Guy Grieve is delighted that his son is upholding the family tradition and learning to dive
A s regular readers of this column will know by now, I have been dive fishing for king scallops in the waters around the Isle of Mull for the best part of a decade. Goodness only knows how many hours I have accrued, pulling myself along stretches of lonely sea bed with just the society of the Atlantic for company.
The novelty of making a living this way never quite wears off however, and it does still feel somewhat odd that much of my daily life is spent underwater. Odd for the simple reason that no one plans to become a scallop diver. It just happens. And you either stop after a while and find something else or it takes a deep hold of you and never lets go. Like a high water that never ebbs. True scallop divers never stop. They’re not there just for the money, much as they might try to make you believe that. They’re there because diving for scallops takes you out to work alone in a wilderness that no one truly owns – a great expanse of endlessly changing underwater terrain which becomes strangely addictive. There is also an aboriginal straightforwardness to it which, being honest, appeals to simple souls like myself.
As readers of this column may also know, I am lucky enough to be the father of two strapping young sons. They are both tough, independent and resourceful boys who’ve grown up riding horses and motorbikes and have mastered the art of being careful in their adventures as all kids who started out in the sticks have learnt. Not once have I ever suggested that either of them might like to learn to dive. In fact I’ve barely even spoken to them about diving, having learned the hard way that any personal passion of their parents is likely to be rejected. But then, a couple of months ago, a breakthrough occurred. My younger son Luke, aged fifteen, was out on the boat and having watched me do a dive expressed a wish to join me.
As you can imagine this was music to my ears. Not wishing to labour the point, lest it put him off, we waited until he mentioned it a few more times and then signed him up to a PADI Open Water course at Puffin Diving in Oban. The fabulous weather of early summer had long since ended and the forecast looked grey and grim with conditions ranging from slightly to very wet every day and consistently windy. Not a problem if you’re going to be underwater I assured him cheerily, and booked a little house on the south coast of Kerrera which belongs to the family of the island’s long term ferryman with an accompanying boat so that we could zip back and forth to Puffin.
The cottage was cosy and picturesque but I dreaded breaking the news to Luke that there was no phone signal, 4G or Wi-fi. Any parent of teenage children knows that asking them to do without their social media is akin to expecting them to live without breathing. How on earth would he cope on the long evenings after the diving – would he go into some kind of cold turkey?
He took the news surprisingly well. Before I could even open my mouth he held up a hand. ‘I know Dad,’ he said with heavy resignation. ‘There’s no 4G or wifi. It’s okay.’ In an attempt to distract him from his pain I’d bought a couple of board games: Risk, which I’d heard is good but actually proved completely impenetrable and far too lengthy; and Scrabble, which fared much better. So after his days diving we had old fashioned evenings by the fire with Scrabble and books for company. I think he surprised even himself by how much he enjoyed it, becoming fiercely competitive at Scrabble and engrossed in a book listing wrecks and dive sites off the West Coast of Scotland.
So during his week’s course, as well as learning how to dive, Luke also discovered there is a different and compelling network, the service provider this time being the North Atlantic. And the great news is, he loved it. Now I can’t wait to introduce him to the magical new world that awaits him beneath the sea.
‘Diving for scallops takes you out to work alone in a wilderness that no one truly owns’