These are my old gardening glasses. I normally use two species of specs, one for reading and close work, and another for more distant vision, like driving, watching TV, gazing around the garden. I have to have access to both types during the course of normal life, and switch between the two. This proves to be a bit of a pantomime in the garden, flipping between the two every five seconds. The designated gardening specs sit in the middle of the two extremes, so I can see things both reasonably close and reasonably distant. Neither view is perfect, both a bit blurry, but they save me messing about with two pairs with full and mucky hands or with gloves on.
This brown pair has done sterling work for several years. They were extremely cheap painted plastic, and are slightly too large for my face, but they’ve never let me down. Much of the paint is peeling off and sometimes flakes end up in my eye, and now the frame has cracked. They have come to the end of their helpful life. Thank you spectacles.
I find the existence of glasses to be a modern miracle. Except of course they’re not modern. Wikipedia tells me that there was evidence for visual aids among the Ancient Romans and Greeks, mainly convex lenses cut from precious stones, and the evidence for the use of lenses increases over the next thousand years.
It also tells me that the first spectacles were probably developed in Italy towards the end of the thirteenth century, with the earliest pictorial evidence dating from the end of the following century. I find this fascinating. A painting of a Dominican friar, scribbling away, wearing a pair of specs, a pince-nez type thing. We still find these in use today.
For 40-odd years I had 20-20 vision, could see close and far, nothing fuzzy at all. Then I started to need longer arms to read things, and once I had begun using reading glasses, I seemed to need a stronger pair every year or two. I am completely reliant on them now. Need them to cook, to watch TV, to use the computer, to write and read. And to garden.
So everyday, all day, I delight in the existence of cheap and easily obtainable specs which allow me to carry on doing all the things I enjoy, and some things I don’t. I take them so much for granted that I rarely think about them until I can’t find a pair, when I become severely compromised. And remarkably no-one owns a patent on them and I don’t need a subscription to use them. They’re practically free. Imagine: all that benefit for so little outlay. Boggles my mind.
All I need to do now is identify an old pair with ‘middling’ magnitude, so I can get back out into the garden.
Thank you for reading.
For more about JB Priestley’s book Delight, from which I originally took my cues, please take a look here:
I had to grow those arms recently. I need them for reading and writing and, of course, sowing seeds. You are right we are fortunate specs can save the day and give a good quality of life for very little money.