Is there anyone who looks good in glasses? Apart from the dentist, flying and smear tests, there is little I like less than choosing new specs.
I have worn contact lenses since a beady eyed secondary school teacher spotted that not only could I not read the words on the white board, I was having trouble locating the white board at all. My parents endeavoured to persuade me that NHS frames (ie: the cheap ones) made me look absolutely gorgeous, a vision in, usually, bilious pink plastic. I may have been young but I was on to them and I put my foot down and refused point blank to wear glasses.
In those days wearing contact lenses was like putting a piece of Tupperware in your eyes, they were so thick, but I persevered, there was no way on earth I was wearing the Joe 90 specs.
My dislike of specs remains to this day but my eyesight is now so bad that I've had to succumb to reading glasses and a second pair for my shortsightedness, so I can find my way from the bed to my contact lenses each morning. Without specs or contact lenses my world is like an Impressionist painting.
Every year or so I'm summoned by my optician for a check up. There's no getting out of it, they're a canny bunch, cancel and they sweetly but adamantly point out they won't be sending my monthly batch of contact lenses until I turn up.
I have no problem with the optician's check up, I quite like being made to jump by that little puff of air as they check my eye pressure, there's no horrible drilling and you get to keep your clothes on.
The bit I really can't abide is choosing new frames. Why is it that in a shop surrounded by several hundred frames, there is not one that doesn't make me look like Dame Edna Everage or my grandma?
I love the way the specs industry has tried to jazz things up and have us believe that glasses are fashionable, hip and cool. Dotted around are posters of fetching women and hot men gazing into the mid distance looking alluring in a pair of specs. Gok Wan has even got in on the act and his range sits alongside the likes of Missoni, Red or Dead, Hilfiger, Karen Millen and RayBan. It makes no difference, £25 or £175, they all make me look like Hank Marvin on a bad day. There is nothing remotely sexy or come hither about me in specs.
Last time I got so fed up and huffy that when finally I found a pair that I could just about bear, I bought identical frames for both my distance and reading glasses and then spent the next two years muddling them up and wondering why my world was constantly fuzzy.
Every year I have that little glimmer of optimism that, maybe just maybe, when I collect my new specs I'll put them on and think 'wow, I look good in these', but in 10 days or so's time I know the reality will be, I'll pick them up, hand over a small fortune, put them on and think 'yep, Su Pollard.'
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