Over-specced?

          Is it commonplace to have three different sets of prescription spectacles – one for reading, one for screen work and one (varifocal) for general use? I have all of these plus another set of varifocals that are photochromic so that I don’t have to carry sunglasses around as well. I should also mention the several pairs of off-the-shelf readers that are strategically stashed around the flat, the campervan and even my wallet, where I keep a pince-nez the size and thickness of a credit card – just in case. For the first 45 years of my life, I didn’t need any of these. Is it payback time or something?

          Not that I should complain. Before the invention of optical lenses, people born with impaired vision just had to live with it. As for those whose sight deteriorated with age, things were more complicated. If, for example, you were apprenticed to make a living from a skill that required acute vision, you could find yourself prematurely redundant by middle-age. As for reading and writing, for most of history, most people were illiterate. In places like palaces and monasteries literacy was perpetuated by employing scribes – a renewable human resource. But the invention of lenses spawned the business of optometry. The eventual spread of literacy led to its growth into a vast and sophisticated industry.

          So much for the potted history; I was on my way to get new photochromic varifocals to replace the old, battered and scratched pair, when I passed the barber’s shop and saw a chance to get smartened up. There are two barbers working the chairs, one from Iraq, the other from London. I prefer the Iraqi, so I check through the window to see he is free before I go in. On this occasion, he was apparently applying the finishing touch to an almost bald client and there was no queue. I hopped in, hopefully. But, within minutes, I was followed through the door by the Londoner, who peeled off his coat, looked at me and said, “Next?”. I made my way, like a man condemned, to his chair.

          The Londoner was trained in the ‘bish-bash-bosh’ school of hairdressing, where he boasts of having been taught that it should take no more than 15 minutes to accomplish a “decent” haircut. He usually clocks in well under. The results are decent enough but, compared with the Iraqi’s more lavish attentions, one is left feeling short-changed.

          Then there is the conversation. The Iraqi (who owns the shop) is quite happy not to converse but to listen to the songs of his budgies, who live in a cage in the corner, while he attends meticulously to every individually misaligned hair. The Londoner expresses views, the most annoying of which is his theory – based entirely on anecdote – that thousands of young men died of heart attacks after being vaccinated for covid 19. He knew at least one of them, personally. I would have argued the case for statistical analysis but for fear of an even worse haircut – that and the limitations of time: I was out of the chair in about nine minutes.

          I went on to meet my Other Half at the opticians, where she was set to approve the style of frames I had previously scouted. “I’m the one who has to look at them when they’re on your face,” she had said, but it turned out my choice was acceptable to her – and modestly priced, to boot. Job done, she took off and I sat with the salesperson as he totted up the cost of the specified lenses and put forward a case for the more expensive, branded ones (who knew that lenses sold per prescription varied in quality according to brand?). I opted for the ones that cost the lesser of the two fortunes quoted.

          When I was on YouTube that evening, a prolonged advert popped up selling some wonderful German-made specs that, so they claimed, would suit everyone’s needs and eliminate the need to have different specs for different uses. I don’t know whether Alexa had been listening in but, if she had, her timing was unfortunate. What I would give for such a marvel!