Speccy Four Eyes

 I remember the first time I got glasses. I'd been in what I didn't know was called denial about my eyesight. I was 11, and had been raised on The Beano, and while at 11 I was ready to put away childish things - I had new, middle-class friends at big school, and was in the process of changing my accent to better fit in with them* (it fooled them, but not their mums) - I 'd been raised on the "Menace/Softy" dichotomy. As an adult I have come to  a place of peace with this tribal sectarianism: I combine Dennis' hairstyle with Walter's appreciation for the lively arts.  

The Two Ages of Man

But back in 1982 I was firmly team Menace and therefore held glasses to be markers of effeminacy and intellectualism. I was a pre-teen Pol Pot. And I'm not sure I knew I had bad eyesight. Sure, I couldn't read the blackboard, but maybe nobody could. I had good hearing and a good memory. I got by, for a while. Eventually a history teacher tumbled me from my phonetic spelling of Cunobelinus**, and I was advised to get a fetching pair of National Health tortoiseshells.

Did I though? All evidence suggests I got modish wire frames later on, but all those photos are from a few years later, when the mid-eighties had shoved me into white jeans, cardigans and grey slip-ons. Did I ever have the classic National Healths, prior to the Adrian Mole years? I'd like to think so. They're certainly the model for my current style. Harry Palmer was a style icon.  

I got out of glasses and into contact lenses as soon as I could convince my mother it would be damaging to my very soul if I didn't get some. In fact, "getting some" was my chief motivator here. Girls don't make passes, etc The lenses were hard and gas permeable, needed to be cleaned with two separate solutions, and occasionally I would have to de-scale them like a kettle, with fizzy tablets I'd leave in a glass of water overnight, like dentures. I had red eyes for years, but at least no one called me "professor", as they had done at secondary school, as though Sophie Aldred were trailing me in a bomber jacket, with a back-pack full of explosives. ***

I wear soft lenses now, but rarely. A month's worth usually last me the best part of a year. I'm mostly in glasses now, one pair for seeing things in the distance, and another for seeing right in front of me. I fend for myself in the middle-distance. I'm buying new glasses this week. I'd noticed that my lenses seemed permanently smudged. I could never seem to get them clean. Closer inspection revealed why. Over the past two years of mask wearing, whenever I entered a shop I was immediately blind with condensation. I sought a solution on-line and received a mysterious cloth, which after blowing on the glasses and wiping with the magic rag, made steam disappear. Unfortunately that's not all it made disappear: the cloth clearly has an abrasive quality. The lenses of my glasses are now latticed with a fine spiderweb of scratches. Covid, so much to answer for. 

I was going to get the same frames (they're called "Tristan", which I'm assuming is a reference to Geoffrey Fourbuoys nerdy son on "George and Mildred", and not Iseult's doomed lover) but they don't make them any more, so it's going to be a new style. Ulp! Do I dare, finally, to rock the tortoiseshell NHS analogues? 

Eventually, as my eyesight deteriorates, I shall have to buy more and more pairs of glasses, for every aspect of my life. Distance glasses, reading glasses, drawing glasses, falconry glasses, eating glasses, walking glasses, glasses for my ablutions, glasses for my abrasions, glasses for peering over, glasses for peeing over. Eventually, I'll wear them, colour coded, around my neck, like a Gonzo Vietnam veteran with a necklace of ears. 

Surely one of them will be tortoise shell. 

    

* I know. First against the wall. 

**What do you mean you've never heard of him. It's the Latin name for Cumbeline, a pre-Roman British King. It means "Strong Dog". His name was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Cymbeline, though their stories share nothing beyond the name. Still nothing? What sort of school did you go to? Cunobelinus was the talk of the playground, down my way. 

***Don't worry. This is an old skool Dr Who reference, which is why you're not getting it.