D'urville Island
Saturday April 12th 2008
TRANSCRIPT OF INSTRUCTIONS TO OPERATIVE
RE: D'URVILLE
DEEP AUTHORITARIAN VOICE:
Commencing instructions to operative Andy about mission
ANDY: Hello
D.A.V: Andy, your mission, should you choose to accept it, to travel to an
undisclosed location, meet up with your crew of Paul, John, and
Shaun, the Englishman from Iraq, and travel by boat to the Island of
D'urville.
ANDY: Uh huh...
D.A.V: Don't interrupt! Once there, you will be joined by another crew of
operatives with whom you are to search for, capture and detain for
further questioning a group of New Zealand spiny rock lobster
(A.K.A. Crayfish.)
ANDY: Okay...
D.A.V: Some preliminary questions. Do you have your own dive regulators
and computer?
ANDY: Umm, yeah but they're at the shop, they were pissing air and I had to
get them fixed.
D.A.V: Then you'll have to use tables. Have you ever dived as a hunter/
gatherer?
ANDY: Err, no.
D.A.V: That's ok; we'll team you with an experienced hunter. Do you know
how many ‘crayfish' can fit in a dive bag?
ANDY: Wow, that's a hard one but I'm not a maths teacher so you'd better
ask John Hornby that one.
D.A.V: Do you know what a rhetorical question is?
ANDY: Yeah, I do, I do.
D.A.V: And one last thing; as the latest member to join the club, you will
write the dive report for the magazine, won't you?
ANDY: Um, wow, yeah, you know, I'm really busy right now so the idea of
writing a report is not really going to be...
D.A.V: That was a rhetorical question!
ANDY: What... Ohhh Damn it!
End of transcript
Final outcome:
A great day had by all. We caught and detained the crayfish, lost the dive flag and I
had some fun meeting some new people who are good at catching seafood. Shaun
(did I spell it right?) is an Englishman who works in Iraq and has immigrated to our
great area. His wife's a teacher. Paul, as most of you know, an electrician. He caught
the biggest crayfish of the day (about as big as a dive tank) John caught a lot (A LOT)
of crays and had so many jammed in the bag they were about to pop out, (It's ok, we
threw half them back again!) Sorry to the guys in the ‘little grunter'. I didn't get to
hear how your day went. Thanks to Paul, John, and Shaun for a good day and to Dan
for making it happen.
Andy McHaffie
