...and thanks for all the fish

My many Southern Chinese readers want to hear about dolphins…Dears, it’s been years since I worked with them.

Should I tell you about the baby I saw being born? Or how its mother apparently drowned him fifteen minutes later? Should I tell you how she skilfully carried the little body close to hers for a week afterwards so that when we were finally able to get a hold of it, it was too decomposed for the autopsy to reveal much?

Or should I tell you about that time when I invited a film crew to come swim with the dolphins and a male called Stripe suddenly took a dislike to a huge grip built like a wardrobe and started beating him up? The man turned green with pain and fear and barely avoided broken ribs.

Should I tell you how New Age American women were so ga-ga over dolphins that they sometime stripped before swimming with them, to “bond” with them better? - a potentially bad idea when you know that dolphins are very sensual and very sexually active, but an idea that the trainers seldom strenuously objected to.

Should I tell you how we used to go in deep water, where I would free-dive down to sixty feet, in the pure cobalt blue, and my husband would send the dolphins down to come get me? They’d slip a dorsal fin under each hand and bring me back to the surface at such speed that my whole body literally rippled?

Or should I tell you about the magic of swimming with wild dolphins, prompt, friendly, curious, vocalizing wildly and watching you eye to eye?

Photo: Michael Laurence

I could tell you all that, but you’ll have to excuse me, I have a tie to put on and an office to go to…

However that might sound, I actually do like my current life very much. The contrast, I suppose…