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Sunday, December 14, 2008

What is that?


A silhouette by nature is insubstantial.

This was borne in on me by the tragedy which struck this lunchtime. My silhouette™ glasses have broken. This time is isn’t merely the attachment to the lens it’s the arm of the glasses themselves. Snapped!

Now the cost of these glasses has been on a par with the price of women (being above rubies) and I had a not unreasonable expectation that the metal sides of these spectacles should have been unbreakable. Alas! For the naive belief that advertisements are true! And for the even more naïf belief that living in another country would be no drawback to cheap repair and replacement!

I am now back to the heavy, irritating glasses with lenses looking like jam pot bottoms.

There is of course an alternative.

I gave up the wearing of contact lenses some time ago and, apart from a few isolated occasions, and for no apparent reason, I have worn glasses constantly. I could go back to contacts but as I am now not only short sighted but also long sighted there are problems with the choice of lens.

The history of my attempts, ably abetted by optician, to get used to a whole range of contact lenses which might be able to cope with this optical problem is a never ending story of failure.

I have tried bi-focal contact lenses; graded strength contact lenses; different material of contact lenses; different strength contact lenses. All failures.

The eventual ‘solution’ was to have one eye corrected for close work and the other eye corrected for distance. “Your brain,” I was told by the optician, “will learn to compensate and choose the appropriate eye for the appropriate job.” Not true.

I also have a series of half frame glasses which are supposed to be able to be used with the contact lenses to allow me to . . .

Alternatively I can go to Sitges and get the things repaired in double quick time. Life, I am afraid, is just too short to try and find the requisite combination of on-ball lenses and nose-adjacent lenses.

And reading is always something which tests the most careful arrangement of glasses, distance, lenses etc. Whereas wearing nothing in front of the eye is still the best for reading that I have found. Or is that merely an argument for indolence?

Those with perfect eyesight will never know the sheer time wasting irritation of faulty eyesight. Losing glasses; cleaning glasses; adjusting glasses; losing glasses again; rain on glasses; growing out of glasses; changing glasses; not quite seeing properly; glasses steaming up. And all the expense!

And don’t get me started on contact lenses. Try saying, “tiny fragment of grit” to a confirmed contact lens wearer and watch the reaction. The eye is a wonderful thing and will go into ‘automatic’ when it encounters a sharp foreign body: it causes the eye lids to close and tears to be produced to wash away the irritation. This is fine. Unless you have a contact lens on your eye in which case the automatic closing of the eyelids merely ensures that the sharp foreign body (did I mention ‘sharp’?) stays exactly where it hurts most.

There are advantages in an out of focus world of course: as a metaphor for the state of the planet; softening wrinkles; creating exciting abstract designs from unprepossessing blocks of flats and making driving just that little bit more challenging!

My Christmas tree looks spectacular, each light with its halo, courtesy of myopia.

And that comment about driving was only a joke. Honestly!

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