As the blasting was announced for eight o'clock I hurried from a half-eaten plate of chips to Marteens shed, where I kept my gear, pre-wet by a generous splash of rain.
In between garden utensils I jumped into my wetsuit in well below the usual half hour and sploshed down to the slipway in little short of a cloudburst. The rain stood as nails on the water that was surprisingly warm. No Dusty appeared at my usual three slams on the water with my monofin. So I paddled along the shallow expecting her to join me any minute. When I reached the rocky outcrop at the end of the beach, the place most in the 'sound shelter' from the Doolin Harbour blastings, she still wasn't there.
Earlier in the afternoon I had managed to attract and keep her there for nearly an hour. I 'played' the waterwing for her with a narrow oval stone, knocking rhythms and rattling along the bumps on the leading edge.
But most of all she wanted to be scratched under her throat and wriggled into her armpits. As it's hard to keep my balance when I stand waist deep, my feet strapped together in my monofin, I sought to lean my back against a rock. There she would also be most out of harm's way. Video
But now, however hard I sounded the waterwing against the rocks or banged a stone on an underwater boulder, no Dusty. So I hung myself on the surface and dipped onto the sand for a good while, twirled a little ballet, wrote my finger in the sand, made all the snorkel noises that she knows from well over a decade. To no avail.
When I felt it to be way over eight I limped back in choppy waves against the current to the faraslipway. When finally there the ocean was even emptier than before.
I had just taken off my monofin when I saw Mildred and Simona approach the slipway, but also that two fisher smacks had arrived at their moorings. And a dorsal fin cutting through the brine: Dusty was in the building!
Moments after she swept by the slipway and began circling fly-by's. I went for the nick as soon as I had my fin on again. Gone was the limp and back was the energy to speed along while cutting capers to keep her attention without slowing us down. On the spot, or rather in a series of them, I invented 'humpbacking', pushing up shoulders and bum in exaggerated alteration. Also I revived side swimming with the waterwing paralleling to and fro. Before I knew it we had arrived at the very spot where we wanted to be, the shallow nick.
I saw two legs running across. It was Simona swaying her magic seaweed. Now to keep Dusty around and about. Time to bring out the goodies. A while ago I had made two triangular hardwood (Lignum Vitae) sticks with differing toothed sides, fine, medium and coarse, to mimic the rasping sounds dolphins produce with their sonar. These I had hung on my weight belt and they proved even to be more than I had expected.
They turned out to xylophonically combine with the different tonal locations on the waterwing. Video
I took off my monofin and put it on the beach together with the waterwing. Now I had my hands free and could move about more easily in the shallows.
Meanwhile Simona was in every corner of my eye as well as in Dusty's, throwing her charms and resourcefulness into ping-ponging Dusty's attention between me and herself. To my wonder and glee the rattling sticks produced a weird wah-wah effect upon rapid dippings, a bell-like resonance, reminiscent of Tibetan temple music. Dusty was mesmerized, she kept swimming around us in tightening circles. Only once she took off for a fishing smack, but shot back in less than three unnerving minutes. Just to keep it more interesting, as Zappa used to say, I blew bubblettes from a thin dialysis hose. Every so often Dusty herself blew a bigbubbleofjoy and one time I saw her swim up to Simona while letting go of a long strand of tiny bubbles, like a string of pearls. I threw the water and myself at Dusty in ways that could have easily caused an attack on a stranger, but her emotional intelligence understood it all came from a kind heart. We were so having a ball!
Then Mildred gave a final wave. The blasting was over. We hadn't heard a thing, nor did we notice any difference in Dusty's behaviour. I parted with her in a final cuddle, then went ashore for a triple hug. There was no doubt about it: we did it!
Back in the twilight shed, groping for my damp clothes, the tension broke, tears running freely down my cheeks in rare relief. Whatever, whatsoever, we did it!