Binocular Chic

Style commentators may care to note that the well-dressed trail-hound groupie always sports a pair of binoculars, usually glued to their eye-sockets & trained on a bracken-covered fellside.
On Monday, the Renaissance Woman was sporting a rather chi-chi pair of hi-tech binoculars, all ruggedised rubber and polarised lenses.
The Renaissance Man brought along a pair that had the massive solidity of the old Soviet Zenit brand and looked as if they'd been designed by the people responsible for the T-54 tank. Bits kept falling off, crushing the toes of the unwary.
The Writer In Residence viewed the races through a pair that had clearly withstood 40 years of Force-10 gales on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Alas the lack of a voluminous duffle-coat spoiled the otherwise convincing effect. And no, it wasn't actually possible to see anything through the brine-encrusted deposits on the lenses. Which sheds new light on the family story about how his father's ship narrowly avoided repeated rammings by the Royal Navy . . .