Just recently I have been getting a few headaches at work and decided I should start wearing my glasses more.  I tend to forget that I have them and wear them very rarely for several reasons, not least that Jayne calls me Harry Potter whenever I do.

It was not really helping much and when a colleague asked me how long I had them I stopped to think and realised that I must have had them for about fifteen year.  First thought was ‘doesn’t time fly?’ and second thought was that maybe I should think about some new ones.I went to the opticians yesterday and it turns out that my eyesight has deteriorated quite a bit since my last eye test two years ago, after staying more or less the same for more than ten years.  I can still see everything fine, but apparently my left eye is doing all the work and that is probably causing those headaches behind the left eye.  The big problem for me is that I can still see OK, but that my eyes have to strain more to do that.

It also turns out that my original glasses are for distance only.  For reading or computer work they are useless.  In fact they probably do more harm than good.  I didn’t know that.  I really only wear them for driving at night which strains my eyes, but I thought they were also good for computer work.

Well now I need a slightly different prescription for distance anyway, but I also need reading glasses.   Rather than have different pairs that I have to keep swapping I decided to go for varifocals, and then discovered just how expensive they are.  Very.

A price worth paying if it means seeing things properly, but still a financial shock.

Maybe I knew about this at some level of consciousness.  It could explain why I was so eager to get a larger monitor for my computer,  why I only bother to read the newspaper two or three times a week instead of every day since a few weeks ago, and why I keep finding excuses to not go out and use the camera.

The camera is one big reason for choosing varifocals: the idea of looking at landscapes or buildings, taking pictures of them and then needing to swap glasses to read the controls on the camera or do any chimping seemed like a lot of trouble.