Spectacles

Glasses, spectacles, specs call them what you will. I've been wearing them since I was 1 1/2 years old. But, we haven't always had the most positive of relationships.

It all began at the bottom of the garden. That was my favourite place to bury them when I was a tot. Seemed like the sensible thing to do. Dig a little hole, plop in my glasses, claim complete ignorance and watch mum go ballistic at yet another pair going missing.

I got a little older and started to play games with what it would be like to see or not to see. In a moment of great childhood wisom, I decided one day, that I could take my glasses off, close my eyes, and navigate my way to my friends house. I was going to be clever enough to negotiate my way down hills and stairs, between buildings and across two roads ( ok! I did intend on having a peek when crossing the roads).
I was doing remarkably well. I had gotten myself down one flight of stairs and along to the end of one row of houses before I smacked my face into a lampost and burst my nose wide open. Lesson learned. Keep the glasses on the face with the eyes wide open.

And so I got a little older. Just into my teens, and a little bolder, I was going to make a statement. I couldn't avoid having to wear them so why not? Thank God my mother managed to talk me out of the pair that I was determined to have. Blue, trimmed in white with the word 'cool' written across the top of the lenses. I was persuaded to opt for a tamer pillar box red pair. I was the bees. Even when they broke, I invented ways of keeping those glasses together. Sewing the legs back on with red thread when they fell off. Red duct tape to hold them together, goodness that stuff is fantastic.

There was also a phase in my mid teens when vanity kicked in and I decided I didn't need to wear them at all. OH, come on we all go through it. And into adulthood. I got sedate and I got boring, but this is not where the story ends uh uh!

The glasses perched on my nose right now maybe a little on the uninspired side, but the story of how I ended up with them isn't.

I was temping in a shop at the time. It was a usual boring day, few customers and not much to do. So we decided to rearrange the entire shop front. The forst incident wasn't fatal, but it was nasty. My work colleague managed somehow to impail herself in the forehead with a metal hook. With blood squooshing everywhere she was quickly rushed to A & E by my manager. That left me on my own.

At last a customer. In the middle of processing the till transaction, I did what everyone who wears glasses does, I reached up to push them up my nose. That's when they snapped completely in half. I couldn't see. I was fumbling about asking the customer to help me put the sale through the till. Eventually they left unserved.

Phone the parents I thought in a flash. Dad can come up and watch the shop and mum can help me put the sales through till my manager gets back. God love them they came running to help out there daughter in her time of need.

At last my manager returned and I left to go and get glasses form one of those do it really fast shop optician places. I was gone lesss than an hour. On returning I turned to my mum and said, " All we need now is for the shop to go on fire."

As the distance shortened and I passed shops on the way someone stuck their head out of a shop doorway and said," Did you hear? The shop went on fire!"