Glasses a new Vision

Glasses a new Vision ©

By Michael Casey

Yesterday my big daughter had her eyes tested, and it would have been easy to take that as a theme, or even sing a song about it. I decided not to then but today I’ll see what’s in the soup on that topic. As you know all Life started in the Soup, so all our experiences are a soup, it’s what makes us, and that’s where my stories come from.

So what do I know about glasses? Well my eldest brother used to have gold framed octagonal glasses and a kind of afro with flared trousers or maybe jeans. It was the end of the 1960s and he was a queen, sorry I mean at Queens, Oxford. Yes, there is even a photo of him somewhere, maybe it’ll come to light when his kids marry, here’s the father of the brides etc.

Then when I started to read, out of fear of Mr Gallagher, who was a fierce man and used to drink with my father, I was discovered to have a lazy eye, at first they waited and then finally I had to have glasses. I can remember my mother mentioned the Queen, or rather Queens and Oxford to the optician while I was having my eyes tested in Newhall Street in Birmingham city centre. This was before optical stores as they call themselves littered the high street, it was 50 years ago after all.

There was a thing called the Miracle Dot, a plastic circle, like a wheel clamp with cleaning lotion inside, you put the lens, and nobody used that word back then, in the centre and squeezed from both sides. Then you used your handkerchief to clean your glasses, and everybody called them glasses, only an optician said spectacles.

A few years later I upgraded to gold framed glasses, but not octagonal, I was not a hippy after all, I was a grammar school boy, Casey Minimus, though my size was maximus. God Bless Mr Hanney our Latin and Spanish teacher, he could really roll his Rs.  5 feet tall and always in his gown, just like Little Caesar, which was his nickname.

Girls wear glasses too, but they must be nice, or removed if any decent boy is within 100yards. Then you have long sighted and short sighted. So if we are looking at something my sister or daughter will hold it against their nose whereas I will hold it at arms’ length at the end of a selfie stick. So it is funny to watch if you are a casual observer.

Which brings me back to story-telling it’s all about observation and seeing things close up and far away, and telling the difference and mixing and matching too. You must have seen that metaphor coming, or have you forgotten to put your contacts in? People are generally switched off, or only have eyes for you, the you being their mobile or tablet. You have to lift your eyes from the gutter and aim for the stars, if I can misquote Oscar Wilde.

Seeing is more than looking in the direction of, or looking without listening, Listening is part of seeing, though Seeing without Listening makes for lack of clarity if I can try your patience. It’s all about being switched on, and really turned on. I’ll disappoint you by not following the path of the metaphor you now have in your head. But I have got your attention, and that’s what seeing is all about. 

So I’ll finish now leaving you begging for more, as any writer or exotic dancer would.