There was a time when we made things. Big, important things like ships and cars. We stopped doing that because it got us all dirty.

I don’t blame us. We’d come home covered in oil and grime and we’d have to spend the evening in the hip bath in front of the fire while the youngest of eleven scrubbed us with a wire brush.

So we got foreign people to come over and do our dirty work for us. Then one day the foreigners woke up and thought, ‘Hang on, why am I going all the way to Middlesbrough to make this stuff, when I can do it right here in Garudjistan? I must be bloody mad!’

And that was the end of manufacturing in Britain.

Our response has been to become a Service Economy. At first glance, you wouldn’t think it would work. Imagine a big house inhabited entirely by butlers:

‘Good evening, sir. Shall I mix your usual cocktail?’

‘Yes, thank you, sir. Meanwhile, you will find that I have taken the liberty of laying out your grey Cardin suit in the dressing room.’

But it seems that so long as the money keeps going round fast enough, it doesn’t actually need to come from anywhere. It’s Pass-The-Parcel Economics – it’s only if the music stops that you’re buggered.

The diving industry, like every other, has had to adapt to the new service ethos.

The equipment is mostly made in sunny countries by people of short stature and life expectancy. Allowing for inflation (so to speak) the big items cost roughly what they did when I first bought them, 80 years ago. This would appear to make the whole business unviable. And so it would be, were it not for a lucrative service infrastructure.

Three months ago, I bought a pair of wetsuit bootees. They were made by six year-olds in Garudjistan and they cost me £3.79. It may not sound like a lot, but in Garudjistan you can feed an extended family of twenty for that, and still have change left to go to the pictures.

The proprietor of the dive shop was happy, too, because yesterday I had to take the bootees back for their first service.

‘How long will you need them?’ I wanted to know.

‘Ooh. Depends on what we find. Depends if we’ve got the parts in.’

‘Parts?’

‘I mean, obviously, with the zips, we’ll do the silicon greasin’. But if we find any track distortion…’

‘What?’

‘Sometimes you get a marginal misalignment of the zipper spicules, caused by excessive torsion in the lower heel architecture. It’s not exactly common, but then again, it’s not exactly uncommon, neither.’

‘And?’

‘Well, clearly we can’t just leave it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Health an’ safety, mate. We could lose our licence.’

‘So what happens if there’s, you know, track…thingy?’

‘Which boot is it? The XP 651. No, my mistake, the 650. Tch. You see, the thing is, they’ve discontinued the 650. We’d have to send off to Garudjistan.’

‘And how long’s that likely to take?’

Normally, about a minute and a half. At the moment, eleven weeks.’

‘WHAT? Why?’

‘Their e-mail’s down, so we have to communicate by postcard. The postcards are shiny on one side, so they tend to slip out of the cleft sticks and fall in the river.’  

‘OK, OK. So how much are we talking?’

Much sucking on pencil and scribbling. ‘If there’s no track distortion…fifty quid.’

‘And if there is?’

‘Three hundred. Four, to be on the safe side.’

‘Fine. Let’s go ahead then.’

‘Certainly, sir.  Glad to be of service.’