Steamy Windows, Zero Visibility.

 I'm currently on a health kick. A relative health kick. I've stopped eating bread and red meat. I've stopped drinking. I force myself to go for a two hour walk every day. I recently took a slightly awkward selfie at the Giant's Causeway - my own face next to some basalt columns - and was alarmed to note an emergent second head poking from my collar, a la "How To Get A Head In Advertising". Closer inspection revealed this wasn't the manifestation of my disgust at 80's consumerism, but a great, swollen jowl, like a facial landslide. It's very easy for me to live a sedentary life. I go nowhere and see no one, barring the occasional Zoom call. I have no demanding children pulling me in ten directions at once. I have an office in my house and it's right next to the kitchen. I have countless hours of excellent (and some straight up terrible) DVDs, and an off-licence within crawling distance. During Covid I barely left the premises. I sat on a sofa and increased. Eventually I broke the sofa. 

Not any more. I'm making a commitment. I was fat before Covid, but it was an acceptable, manageable level of fat. That's all I want back. I don't want to look like Ron Mael. I'd settle for Ron Sexsmith at this point. So if that means I have to give up all of my favourite things: wine, meat and bread, then it's time to hold the steak sandwich. 

It's always the bread I miss most. The heroin of foods. A lovely crusty bloomer with butter. Or one of those loafs made with three types of cheese, toasted. Or a baguette loaded with a weeping brie. God. What am I doing to myself?

I decided to to combine today's walk with my optician's appointment. My optician is in Connswater - the unlovely shopping centre I describe in grim, exacting detail in my short story "The Wink and the Gun". It's a brisk forty five minute walk from my house. Perfect. A round trip of an hour an a half. That'll do. I hope I don't run afoul of any weird phantom children making bonfires! (that's a reference to the story which, guys, you really should have read by now. It's available, as part of the anthology The Black Dreams, in all good book shops. BUY BUY BUY). 

It was a foolish idea. Forty five minutes of brisk walking was fine while I was doing it, but as soon as I stopped, I was flooded with sweat. It doesn't matter on my body - I was abundantly deoderised - but my temples were slick and I was fogging every pair of glasses Ita, my optical assistant, placed on my face. Eventually, she advised me I could take off the face mask - as if that had been the problem. I stubbornly continued to steam gently like broccoli spears.

 She wasn't having any of my suggestions either. As I instinctively moved toward to £19 frames, she dragged me over to the £69 ones - I think she'd sussed out I wasn't a "designer" kind of guy by the way I kept talking about "NHS specs" and "Harry Palmer was a style icon", while sweating like Gloria on "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum". (These are all references I fear would be lost on young people today. Or even old people today. This is what happens when you crack open the mono-culture. I don't know what allusion anyone is going to understand anymore, the culture is too diffuse, too diverse*. Should I have acted out a meme or a grumpy cat? Said "This Is Fine!" and burned to death? I was hot enough.)

 I always buy cheap frames, for the following reasons a) historically I've always been poor b) I genuinely seem to like the cheaper ones, though it's possible my aesthetic has been shaped by years of poverty...and c) because of my VERY SPECIAL eyes I need expensive lenses. I've got all sorts of things needing correcting in there, all manner of knackered rods and cones. My eyes are the wrong shape for a start, they're not properly round. I have an astigmatism, which sounds like I might spontaneously bleed from a tear duct. I'm both short and long sighted. (Ita: "What will you be using these glasses for?" John: "Oh, just general seeing. Getting from A to B, y'know." Ita "...") To stop me looking like Hans Moleman I need the lenses thinned, which costs extra. There is a secondary thinning process available too, but that's a madman's dream. 

Except this time. This time Ita had an offer. If I bought the expensive frames I was open to a world of deals, big, money saving inducements. When it transpired that the frames I had chosen would need the extra secondary thinning, it opened me up to a secondary deal tier. These then, the most expensive glasses I'd ever bought, turned out to be the cheapest glasses I've ever bought. I felt like I'd wandered into a new tax bracket and was reaping the benefits of solid, duplicitous financial advice. Or she wanted the sweating heap out of the shop sharpish and was bargain-blasting me from the room. Either way. I shall be getting new glasses next week. And they're pretty tasty. And there IS a hint of tortoiseshell. 

I walked home. Got in. No sweat. It's just for company/commercial transactions. My sweat greases the wheels of commerce. 

*I'm largely in favour of this, of course. The culture can't stagnate even if I don't really understand its odd, new permutations. But it does rather harsh my sweet jokes about seventies sitcoms. C'mon.