I always thought that would be me, eighty years old and still not wearing glasses (please note I am saying nothing about the bottle!) but it was not to be.

I can almost pin-point the exact moment I realised I could not actually see as much as I thought I could.  I was in the supermarket.  I had picked up a packet of something and found myself struggling to read the tiny print on the side.  In annoyance (‘why the hell would anyone print anything that small??’) I picked up a pair of those $5 reading glasses I always used to look right past, put them on and, lo and behold, I could read the small print.  ‘Mmmmm—think I’ll just drop a pair of those into the shopping basket right now.’

The following Sunday I fished them out of my bag to see if they would make any difference to reading the weekend papers, and quickly realised how much I had previously been skimming over (which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing by the way.  Has the news always been that awful?  Maybe I’ll continue to skim over the nasty bits and go straight to the funny pages—or—here’s a thought—I could just not wear glasses. . . )

Anyway, the truth is I had never really given a lot of thought to the logistics of wearing glasses before.  Things certainly appear clearer while I am wearing them but I have also given myself quite a fright once or twice by looking in the mirror while I had them on—or forgotten that I had them on when I was not actually reading and finding myself tripping over anything further than a book’s length away. As kids we used to laugh at Dad when he would come indoors from a cold and frosty outside and his glasses would immediately fog up and leave him blind and blundering about the kitchen.  As an adult that image still makes me smile, but the reality—not so much.  Drinking a cup of tea while reading the paper has suddenly become two distinctly separate issues.  Then, of course, there is the constant putting on and taking off and putting on again—while always seeming to manage to leave them off in a room at the other end of the building from where I need them now.

I am being a bit dramatic I know as I still only need them for reading and I daresay I will get the hang of it but—still a bit annoying.  I have had my eyes tested now (properly—not just tried on more of the x1.5 and x2 readers at the chemist) and have been reliably informed that there are no nasty underlying issues, it is just ‘natural deterioration with age’.  Thank you SO much for that.  If I had been wearing glasses when the optometrist told me that I would have taken great delight in glaring scathingly across the top of them and giving him SUCH a look!

On the plus side (apart from actually being able to read anything of course) there is now one new thing to shop for.  Yay!  And, even better—you can shop for your new glasses on-line.  All you need is your prescription and a couple of hours of playtime.  You can even load a photo of yourself onto the website and ‘try’ the different frames on your face—it’s a real hoot (and a terrific time-waster but the fun of it easily makes up for that).

So now I have a brand spanking new pair of specs which I am very happy with, purchased online for a really reasonable price and delivered straight to my door.  I am now thinking perhaps I really need a second pair—you know, just in case.  I have just seen another pair on the same site that I really, really, like, and honestly, it’s bit of a no-brainer  as far as I can see—wearing the same pair of glasses every day is a bit like wearing the same pair of shoes every day.  Don’t you agree?