I will look like a Fledermaus!

There are many sane and stable Americans and I read their Blogs every day. Jessica for example is entirely normal and quite sane. She is so normal that she went to see the Yankees at Spring Training.

OK so that’s my kind of normal not Cate’s kind of normal. 

Sure she lives in North Carolina but that’s not her fault. She also worries what people think of Americans because many of them do weird things. But she needs to understand that we do not blame her personally for this. It is a cultural thing.

I am not sure how all the weirdness came about. Sometime in the 1950s America and the rest of the civilized world parted company. 

Americans started seeing UFOs, getting abducted by Aliens, believing in Creationism, and that the best way to create a wealthy society is to have a really poor underclass – and to make really rich people even richer. It beats me.

Europeans don’t understand it – but they don’t much care either – they accept that Americans are different.

But take heart Jessica. We do not blame you or your friends and we know you will do the right thing come election time. It will not do you much good – but just do your best. 

In the meantime – I am starting preparations for our diving trip to the Maldives in April. We have not dived since before we left Australia and I discovered on opening the plastic containers with our wetsuits that a Wombat had crawled in there and died.

Sure it is not in there now but you can smell where it has been.

Gabriele at Lion Dive looked at some of our gear sadly and said that it was a bit past it and would not be worth servicing  – which is true – so I am buying a new Octopus (left) and Dive Computer for each of us. 

I am also buying a new mask. Gabriele had trouble finding one to fit me precisely because of the – ahem – size of my nose.

My new mask makes me look like a Fledermaus. I am underwater - Who cares?