Goggles and Closed Shoes

Wednesday. Today’s party came dressed for the occasion, and I wept a little, privately, into this log.

Brass goggles. A naval greatcoat with more buttons than strictly necessary. A striped diver’s jersey. And a young man dressed as a professor, with a notebook he wrote in for the whole hour, though I never saw what. These are my kind of people. One of them wore sandals, which is not.

Closed shoes are the one law of the deep. I have no opinion on hats, beards, capes or monocles; wear what you like. But the deck of a submarine is no place for toes.

They also arrived a quarter of an hour early, which the management asks of everyone and which surprisingly few manage. It gave them time to put their telephones in the lockers, hear the briefing and admire Barnacle, who had polished himself. The sandals were exchanged for sneakers from somebody’s car. I did not ask whose car.