LAST ADVICE FROM TOM KIRKHAM

Tom Kirkham’s wife, Hildegunn sent me the following which she found when clearing through his papers. A last bit of advice from my old boss.

“The Law of the Diver”

There are laws in the life of the diver, and rules that you always must keep,
Make one mistake in your bell checks could mean that you’ll rot in the deep.
There are many go down to the Oceans, for reasons both varied and wide,
But divers are all a bit different, they are all a bit odd on the side.
They come from the strangest of backgrounds, the schools and the factories and banks.
Machine shops and butchers and painters, and usually thick as two planks.
The North Sea has brought them from homelands, as far as Australia and more
From New Zealand and stateside and farther, Africa, Ireland, Lahore.
So watch, when your doing your check outs, test it, not just a glance,
Take your time and do it all smartly, this dive may be some one’s last chance.
It’s different when you’re on the inside, your waiting for lift off and hope
The shift supervisor is sober, and not some congenital dope.
Who knows some bright boy in the office, that stuck him in there for a price,
And your life’s the stakes for their gamble, and those idiots throwing the dice.
It’s easy to not check the wires, the gas in the bottles and tools,
But it helps to remember the divers, who have died at the hands of the fools.
We all know the safety group worry, the managers worry as well,
But their worry is never as urgent as the poor bastard stuck in the bell.
For every diver whose perished, there’ something forgotten somewhere,
Or a clown that should never have been there, or someone who just did not care.
The gear that your using is wearing, renew it whenever it’s poor
Diving has changed a lot lately, and there’s money so always ensure
When you see a weak point you report it, check it later to see it is done,
It could be a shackle that’s going, and won’t last another bell run.
Check the doors and the seals and the handles, the chains and the clips on the weights
And remember the sat team inside there, completely depend on their mates.
There’s an array of Pundits ashore now, experts at their desks by the ton,
Put there by a government charter, locking stables when horses are gone.
Out here at the core of the matter, there’s no experts just you and I,
We earn the money to feed them on their diet of pie in the sky.
Did you notice that after a bell crash, when often the divers are dead,
This bunch of wankers are apt to, come right off the top of their head,
With answers we’ve known for ages, but they took a year to decide,
“Human error” they say in their wisdom, is how those two divers died.
The error is human I grant you, and maybe it starts at the top,
Since the North Sea began in the sixties, they have never been able to stop,
The accidents happening so often, the inquests and arguments too/
So you see it comes back to the divers, and basically that still means you.
Think safety let that be your motto, it’s a problem of immeasurable size,
If you don’t - then listen I’ll give you, a well thought out piece of advice.
If your son his father would follow, discourage him now, do not lend
Your support to his lifetime of sorrow, with nothing to show at the end,
But bone shadows, and osteo arthritis, creaky joints and a lungful of groans,
If he’s lucky, that is, if he’s not then, the sea will wash over his bones.
You can laugh it off now when you’re winning, you’re young and you’re headstrong and sure,
But look far ahead to the future, what talents have you for the shore?
Think now when you’re on the bottom, your hot water temperatures dropped.
And you’ve screwed up the job that your doing, the bulbs in the bell lights have popped,
Your tired and weary and frozen, a bad dive where nothings gone right,
Through no fault of yours or your partners, and the clients been dripping all night.
The crew on the topside complaining, with the food and the rig and the rates,
The job and the base and the camp boss, and some big fat arse in the States.
You’ll know when you feel the first twinges; it’s time to be moving ashore,
But you’ll look at the bank book and leave it, to get just that little bit more.
For greed is the driving compulsion, that keeps you in this thankless game,
When the fun has gone out of the diving, and your only a diver in name.