Glasses

It is coming to the time of year when I have to make a decision. When driving my little tank (or my car, whatever) do I wear my glasses or my sun glasses? Each has it’s benefits. My glasses help me to see and therefore I don’t plough off the roads, in to the elderly and cause widespread disaster. However if the sun is shining they make little difference as I can’t see anything anyway and run the risk of my retinas being burnt out. Of course I could put the little flappy sun shield thing down but they don’t work. Perhaps I should buy massive sun glasses and where them over my normal glasses? Or just be grateful for the fact I live in the UK and chances are this will only be a problem for a week or so.

I am meant to wear my glasses all the time. But I don’t this is for a variety of reasons. The main one being that they make me look like Ronnie Barker – which is no bad thing when I am watching telly or driving but not really the image that I wish to portray around the office. Someone might ask me if I am the phantom raspberry blower of London Town. The second reason is that I have a vague idea of training my eyes – if I wear them all the time then there is no concept of a challenge. They will become lazy and then the next step is inevitable a stick and a dog, at the moment I can still fool them in to working and then every now and then when I feel it is important to see I can treat them to a bit of 20/20. Thirdly I have a theory that my eye sight will improve over the years. This is based in fact. At the moment I am short sighted and need my glasses for distance. As people get older most become long sighted and need glasses for reading and close up work (hence the bizarre dance of trying to hold a paper at the right distance for reading). I am ageing, therefore at some point I shall become long sighted thus correcting my short sightedness ipso facto – perfect vision for my old age.

Or I’ll need bi-focals.

But the main reason for not wearing my glasses is that I quite like the foggyness bad eyesight brings. I have waved at many people and then as I get closer realise I don’t know them at all and have just grinned and waved at a complete stranger. However around 90% wave back so I am making the world a friendlier a place. I also have many wonderful experiences that I wouldn’t have if I could see clearly. Like the time I saw a goose on the pavement. A huge brown goose. It was actually someone crouching down to tie their shoelaces. The time I saw a giant, freestanding Forever Friends Bear – actually a fold up table outside the pound shop. And on Monday I saw Alan Carr cruising down Borehamwood High Street in an open top Honda before popping in to Paddy Power. It wasn’t him.

I shall at some point wear my glasses. I will have to as I will never ever wear contact lenses. It’s not so much the putting them in that worries me, it’s the taking them out. Plunging your hands in to your eyes and ripping the lenses off. And whilst talking to someone suddenly grab your eyelid and pull it down whilst saying “oh it’s gone round the back”, it’s normally around then that I spontaneously vomit in to my own lap.