Glasses Coming in to Land!

Whilst away at Woodbrooke I had a glasses crisis.  Everyone there is terribly helpful and the Friend In Residence taped them up for me whilst searching fruitlessly for some superglue.  However the glasses, having now been mended twice, were basically doomed; so forth I sallied yesterday in search of more.

These are just bog-standard reading glasses so I was planning just to get some off the peg: however, Specsavers are now prescription-only and warned me that most opticians have gone the same way.  ‘Where should I try?’  I asked.  ‘Poundland,’ she replied, as though the only alternative to full-on, sanctified, blessed-by-the-Pope prescription glasses is a pair of tatty plastic fall-apart-as-soon-as-you-wear-them goggles.  No thanks.  ‘Anywhere else?’ I wondered hopefully.  She suggested Primark.  Primark?  OK, I’ll give it a try… but no, Primark had ‘a few’ glasses in and are now sold out.  No plans are in train to replenish the stock.  Sighing, I exited and went instead on a blinds quest.  (There must be some amusing way of tying up ‘blinds’ and ‘glasses’ – I expect it’ll come to me.)  The blinds in the futility room were old and mouldy and I thought of replacing them with roller-blinds; however a criss-crossing scan of Wilko’s failed to locate any.  I was just leaving when bang! I came face-to-face with an entire row of reading glasses, all helpfully labelled with the degree of magnetism and a reading chart to guide you (I’m 2.5 in case you’re interested.)  So reader, I bought them.  It was only when I began to unwrap them at home that I saw the instructions about batteries.

Batteries?  Since when do you need batteries for glasses?  While the mind boggled I took them out and examined a bulge at the side which I assumed was the battery compartment.  What the -?  I turned back to the instructions and discovered there’s a little switch on each side which turns on a reading light.

I can now read books whilst looking like a plane coming in to land…

Kirk out

Kirk out