HAPPY NEW YEAR ! by FRANCIS LE GUEN

The mood of Francis Le Guen

Because sometimes, do not mess around!

Music credits: Erwan & Eric Le Guen

The new year is the perfect opportunity to make good resolutions. Especially since we narrowly escaped the end of the world… Just that! For diving, it's the same. So, as far as I'm concerned, in 2013, I decided:

Small 1 : no longer to say bad turtles
Small 2 : to buy a snorkel worthy of the name
Small 3 : do not make fun of all Lisette who suffer in silence
Small 4 to learn to dive with a magnifying glass
Small 5 : never to eat shark fin soup again (nor turtle soup either ...)
Small 6 : not to bother with coral anymore, besides there are hardly any more ...
Small 7 : to do my baptism, a real one!

As long as I'm at it, I plan to stay well on my stand at the next Salon de la Plongée. Guess the name of the stand? Turtle Prod… Yes! I promise not to run down the aisles to try and seed the hordes of readers chasing me with their syringe-shaped pen for a dedication. There have been complaints ...
I promise to stop publishing my miserable word games on Facebook. To spend an hour a day collecting oceanographic information that is of no interest to anyone. Instead, I promise to go diving at least once a week, here in front of my home in Marseille. There is only the first step that costs. To finally visit the wrecks of the Planier! Similarly, I promise to dive on the wrecks of Hurghada, this summer. No kidding.
Yes, because for those who do not know, I am not a collector of "classics". I have spent my life diving in impossible places around the world, but do not know a tenth of the most popular sites. This is how.
What easily go for a blue in the divers meetings. In general, a guy accosts you, and asks you, to burn:
This weekend, we go down to Planier. Is it good right now?

In front of my disappointed mine, the guy adds:
On the Dalton… Did you do the Dalton?
Uh ... well, actually ...
In general, the guy looks at me with round eyes and wonders if I do not pay his vial. Then, suspicious, he returns to the charge by the band:

Le Chaouen then? No ? The Messerschmitt? He takes out his wrecks like a card maker….
So, in front of my repeated denials, the stunned guy dances from one foot to the other, disappointed, perhaps a little embarrassed also to have put me in trouble. But there is really nothing!

Who can claim to have dipped everywhere? So yes, I caressed the whales of the southern islands before yielding to the sirens of Tourlaville. I dive without a cage with the white sharks of Australia before cooing at the Pigeon Islands. The Mexican cenotes were my playgrounds in the middle of the 80 years, long before I succumbed to the "deep" of the hold of Ploumanach, great moment of exoticism elsewhere. And I still have not plunged to the lighthouse of Planier!
But the exact definition of "center of the world" is very imprecise, depending on your point of view. You have noticed ? When you travel! When you are away from home? Are you closer to elsewhere? But you are far from home!
Do not we also say "La Caulerpa is always greener elsewhere" and "everyone sees noon to his fleet"? Get on with that! The daily life of one is the exoticism of the other. For my part, I had some coconut trees! By the way, by the way: are there bread trees in the Sandwich Islands?

So, in 2013, I promise to give up Palau, Raja Ampat, Fakarava, Antarctica itself: that would remind me too much of the job! No. In 2013, to me the small Posidonia meadows, the vertigo of the northern gravel pits, the mysteries of the Thau pond, the compact palanquées of l'Estartit ... In 2013, God forbid, to me the balèzes dives!
With that, I renew my wishes and wish you a happy new year. And you, by the way? What are your good dive resolutions for 2013?