Even through my hood, I know that they are talking about me, quietly laughing maybe or is that just me being paranoid. I don’t know, and I really don’t care. This is my Fear, that I am willing myself to conquer. Arguing with myself, pushing myself to just go ahead and jump. I can feel it, the disappointment I will feel if I don’t do it. How I would feel like a right ‘Prat’ and then probably never ever get the guts up to go through with it again. And then something clicks, ‘oh @”L IT’ I scream to myself in my head, quickly scanning the water below me, black, calm and looking ever so cold and unfriendly.

I signal to my instructor, who has been bobbing around freezing, watching me and shouting encouraging words from down below to me for the last few minutes.

And I step forward into thin air, the strangest feeling ever, my heart beating wildly in my throat. leaping off the rock face and out, just hearing the group cheering and clapping, making whooping noises for me.

And then I hit the water, shock first as the freezing cold hits me as I break through into the darkness. It bites at my face and makes me gasp, as I breathe deeply, trying to calm the panic as down I sink.

I count myself down 3, 2, 1, breathing on que trying to calm myself down.

My eyes hardly having time to adjust themselves to the blackness, murky with bits of weed swirling around as I am thrust back to the surface, breaking through the water and inflating my BCD. Feeling the air squeezing my body suit tighter around me, holding me afloat.

I signal to my instructor and spit my regulator out as it then slowly bubbles and sinks to my side.

And I look over the cliff side and see the group, some still watching, others getting ready to take the plunge themselves. A feeling of elation washing over me, was it really that hard, I laugh to myself.

‘Oh yes’ I think smiling. And that was the first of many a jump taken into, the dark deep waters of the welsh quarry called Vivien.

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