Another Great Day at Sea

Read Another Great Day at Sea Storyline:

'We were on one of the technologically most advanced places on earth but the guys in grease-smeared brown sweat shirts and floatcoats, draped with heavy brown chains, looked like they were ready to face the burning oil poured on them from the walls of an impregnable castle. The combination of medieval (chains) and sci-fi (cranials and dark visors) didn't quite cover it though; there was also an element of the biker gang about them. All things considered, theirs was one of the toughest, roughest looks going. No wonder they stood there, lounging with the grace of heavy gun-slingers about to sway into the saloon. Every gesture was determined by having to move in this under-water weight of chain. I couldn't keep my eyes off them. They weren't posing. But in this silent world everyone is looking at everyone else the whole time, all communication is visual, so you're conscious, if you're a guy with a load of chains hanging from your shoulders like an ammo belt, that you're the fulfilment of some kind of fantasy-not a sexual one, more like a fantasy of evolution itself. And they weren't swaggering, there was just the ease that comes from having to minimise effort if a task is to be properly done, especially if a good part of that task involves standing around waiting with all that weight on your shoulders.' In November 2011, Geoff Dyer fulfilled a childhood dream: spending time on an aircraft carrier. Geoff 's stay on the USS George Bush - on active service in the Arabian Gulf - proved even more intense, memorable - and frequently hilarious - than he could ever have hoped. The warship become a microcosm for a stocktaking of modern Western life: Religion, drugs, chauvinism, farting, gyms, steaks, prayer, parental death, relationships and how to have a beach party with 5000 people on a giant floating hunk of steel. Piercingly perceptive and gloriously funny, this is a unique book about work, war and entering other worlds.