elegantly dressed spectacles - family visit special bonus

I'm waiting for my new glasses to arrive. They are going to be splendiferous!

Alas, I need about six pairs. The good news is that all of them are going to be equally dazzling, so much so that I can hardly wait for their arrival! (This is even aside from any advantage to my actual ability to see. I'm assuming there will be some.)

And I have decided to eschew the cheap lenses that Specsaver has been foisting on me for years, as if mere cheapness is in itself clever: my new (proper) opticians tell me they won't touch those with a bargepole. And my pencilled countertop calculations were heavily influenced by the fact that the ultra-posh Kodak (I think) lenses throw in a spare pair of glasses (with only one prescription in them) for free. Now, if there is one thing I've learned over the years, it is that a spare pair of glasses is really hardly a luxury at all. So I'm getting (adorable, rectangular tortoise-shell) posh distance-&-reading glasses; red rimless spare distance specs; small dark oval reading specs (my all-time favourite frames, given yet another incarnation); and I'm keeping my present reading specs to be my new computer specs (which is what I mainly use them for anyway).

Can you imagine: and I just bought a smaller handbag.

But! I have just today spoken to Gary the optician, wondering why I have not yet seen these wonderful glasses, which were supposed to be ready "by" yesterday. He tells me his glazing machine is broken. He says he can cut lenses but he can't put the groove into lenses for rimless frames. For some reason (his shop is on Highbury Corner) he sounds as if he is in the middle of the intersection; I can hear every car, truck, bus, passerby, more clearly than I can hear him, and indeed the line cuts out at one point. Sometimes Gary sounds as if he's underwater. He clearly - remember, last time I saw him he'd spent an entire day moving his boiler at home to a new location and plumbing it in, but he needed two small parts for it - he clearly just isn't getting a long very well with machines.

He continues: "this is of no use to you whatsoever, it will bore you, but it will do me good to get it off my chest. See, inside the machine there are these two cameras... they're so small you wouldn't even believe they're cameras!"

"Yes I would," I say.

"And one of them is broken, and I think it's coming tomorrow. But if it doesn't, then it'll be early next week... I was here till midnight the night before last!"

Meanwhile, here are my dad and his parents, circa 1941, in their glasses.

By the way, this picture makes clear to me something my mother has been remarking on for years and which anyway I have suspected: that I am the absolute spit of my Grandma. I have a treasure trove of pictures brought over by my indefatigable sister, and I'm sure Grandma will be reprised over the coming weeks. There's a hat & coat set you have got to see.

And here's a bonus from about ten years later: