vision

A few weeks ago my good woman meets me in the city just after five and in the growing dark we visit a shoe shop, an eye-wear shop, and a tea shop.

After trying on spectacle frames all over Melbourne, Sydney and Darwin I return to Little Collins Street and purchase a set of blue Dolce and Gabbana frames. Even the savviest technology and snappiest design cannot justify the outrage of charging me $360 for less than 15 grams of plastic and two sprung hinges.

I admire the specs that perch on the pert nose of my manager in a former job. She tells me she picked them up at the airport in Kuala Lumpur for $20. Unfortunately I can’t afford the ticket for Malaysia. Instead I tether the Red Rocket to a tree in Croydon’s main street and enter my local optometrist’s shop.

“What can we do for you?” asks the bouncy receptionist in a contrasting laid-back Australian drawl.

“I’d like you to make me a pair of glasses,” I reply, doffing my helmet and unstrapping my backpack. “Not you personally, but you have my prescription. I’ve brought my own new frame.”

“Well, aren’t you a good man,” she says. I tell her that I do my best. “The technician will be back in a minute. She’s just popped across the street.” 


In the 13 years I’ve come here to have my sight seen to, grumpy old Wilfred has been the technician. The new tech arrives almost immediately and she’s got freckles and curly orange hair and looks about 17.

“Take a seat and let’s have a look,” she says. It’s obvious to both of us that the new frame slopes down from right to left. She places the frame upside down on the bench and it fails to sit flush. “There we go,” she says.

“My head’s not symmetrical either; one ear in lower than the other,” I point out. When she takes the new frame away to adjust it, I check my head in the mirror. The left ear is definitely lower. She returns and places the warm frame on my face.

“You tend to tilt your head to that side,” she observes. Must be the weight of my heavy left ear.

We talk costs. Multifocal lenses (with the new better peripheral vision), with transitions (they turn into sunglasses outside—$120 extra) , and scratch and glare resistant coating, will set me back $680. Add the frame cost and mandatory $30 fitting fee and we’re talking a pair of glasses worth $1070.

When I gulp, the young technician counters with, “But you wear them all the time.”

“I’ll wear them in my sleep,” I tell her, “so I can see what’s going on in my dreams.”

The glasses with lenses will weigh about 25 grams. That’s $43 a gram. Cocaine would be cheaper and more fun.

Rock on.