Tag: vision

7 Reasons You Should Never Throw Away Your Left Contact Lens

Jon had to get this close to see what he was doing

1. Replacement. I wear monthly disposable contact lenses. For those not in the know it means I can wear a pair for 28, 30 or 31 days before they automatically dissolve into my iris. Occasionally though, the lenses become irritating or torn before the 28, 30 or 31 day limit arrives. When this happens I get rid of them and put in a new lens. It makes sense. So yesterday when my left lens started irritating me, I threw it in the bin. I then went to bed. And I slept. Soundly. This morning I rose, showered and went to put a new lens in. And this is when I realised I really should have checked I had a spare left lens before I got rid of the irritable one. Because I didn’t. There was no lens. Not one. Zilch. Oh dear.

2. 2006. England lost to Portugal on penalties and I broke my leg playing cricket. As far as I can remember those are main the highlights from that year. You probably still have visions of at least one of these. Something else happened in 2006 though. I bought a pair of glasses. You’d probably only remember this if you were my joint optometrist/stalker. The glasses in question can be seen above. Now, five years is a long time in eye years. Mine have deteriorated quite a lot and as such so have the minus numbers on my prescription. As a result, unless I am up very close and personal, I can’t see a bloody thing through them. The wise among you may question why I haven’t purchased glasses since 2006. Well, I have. It’s just that I sort of lost them. Twice. And losing stuff is an expensive hobby. Which is why I haven’t bought anymore since. So basically, I’m blind. I’m wearing these glasses but I’m blind.

3. And Scary. I don’t like me in glasses. Especially these glasses. I think I look like I am trying to look inside your brain. And I’m not. I’m really not. To be honest with you I’d probably struggle to find your head with these on. But I can’t tell everyone who sees me that I am not as scary as I look. If someone came up to me and told me they were not as scary as they looked I wouldn’t believe them. So how can I expect other people to believe me? Until I can get my eyes on a new lens I am going to have to look directly at the floor. At all times. If I can see where it is.

4. Vision Express. I don’t know much about other opticians as I’ve always been with Vision Express. For contact lenses at least. They’re a touch on the expensive side but they do offer added benefits. Apparently. And a free quarterly magazine which I last received in 2009. So I guess they could improve their service a bit. One thing they do offer is free replacement lenses if you accidentally tear one (or throw it in the bin). The two mile blind walk to the branch is somewhat frustrating, but at least you know you’ll be able to see on the return journey. Or at least you would be able to if Vision Express had the lenses you require in stock. If they don’t you have little option but to make the blind walk home. And no, you can’t get a bus. You’ll probably get on the wrong one. Or get in the cab of a fire engine. You might get lucky though, it might not be moving like the one I tried to get into was.

5. Irrational Behaviour. Now, I have never felt the inclination to rummage around in bins before, but that could well have been because I have never lost my sight before. That’s why you’d have found me in a bin at about 11am today. Or my hands at least. Don’t worry, there was nothing else in the bin apart from a tissue. And the packaging from a new pen. Hopefully you will have worked out by now that I was looking for my left contact lens. I found it. All crisp and brittle. In a move that would startle eye health experts the world over the lens is now sitting in cleaning solution in my desperate attempt to bring it back to life. And you know what, yes, I am going to try and wear it again. Because I’m a rebel. An irrational rebel.

6. Dishonesty. I wear my contacts every day. Except Sundays. That at least is what I tell my optometrist. Obviously, being a normal person, I wear my contact lenses every single day including Sunday and lie to my optometrist. Oh, don’t pretend you’re not the same. But now I’m not wearing contact lenses at all. Which means when I tell my optometrist that I wear my contact lenses every day except Sunday I’ll be lying about six days of the week. At least when I wore my lenses I was only lying about one day of the week. Throwing away my contact lens has made me dirty,

7. Time. Throwing away a contact lens destroys your day. Or, in this case, the next day. It’s now 2pm. Today’s 7 Reasons post should have been uploaded at 9am. That’s five hours ago. Trying to restore my sight – and so far failing – has taken five hours! That means I am five hours behind schedule. This means I will have to have my lunch at 6pm. And my dinner at midnight. I’ll go to bed at about 3.30am. And get up at about 11am. And the process will continue. Always. I’ll never post a 7 Reasons piece on time ever again. I’ll be late for my wedding. I’ll try and make a baby in the middle of the biscuit aisle in Tesco. I’ll end up in the wrong coffin. This is a disaster. Because I can’t see I am always going to be five hours behind the world.* And not just in the brain department. What a nightmare. What an absolutely hidoeus nightmare my life has become.

*Unless I move to New York.

May 4, 2011
7 Reasons We Like Birthday Cards

Last year we provided you with seven of the finest World War propaganda posters that the world had never seen. They now exist in a very pleasant postcard collection. Today we thought we’d do the same with birthday cards. It’s a fascinating collection displaying the very finest in 7 Reasons style, humour and photoshop. Well, mostly.

1. Eyechart. Remember the good old days when your Dad could read? Yes, so do I. This card humorously reminds them that they are aging very quickly. Don’t worry, they wont find it insulting. By the time they have found their glasses they’ll have forgotten what they needed them for.

2. I Like This. Are you on facebook? Yes, of course you are. The only person who isn’t is my Mum. And good for her. It means she has more time to bake cakes and stuff. It also means she has real friends. That’s in stark contrast to the rest of us who have never actually met at least 20% of our ‘friends’. This card is ideal therefore for the social media nut in your life. It would also help if they have watched Notting Hill. And they’re a boy. You need to be a girl too. Or a male lesbian.

3. Copper Letters. This is our minimalist card. It wasn’t intentional, it’s just that these were all the letters we found down the side of the 7 Reasons sofa. Luckily for those among us who have birthdays, all the letters required to spell ‘Happy Birthday’ were present. Unfortunately we could only find a number zero and a number six. Which means this card is only really suitable for the six or sixty year-old in your life. At least you can reuse it though. Just hang on to it for fifty-four years.

4. White. Then we realised that our minimalist card wasn’t minimal enough. So this is our ist card (it’s so minimal that we could only make it more minimal by dispensing with the word minimal). Have we said “minimal” enough now? Good, we’ll stop then. This card recognises that the best cards in the shop are always the ones in which the interior is “left blank for your message” and contains the message “exterior left blank for your image” within. Printed in white. Which makes it appear even more…er…even less maximal.

5. Chess With Death. This birthday card designed specifically for the film buff references the Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal, in which an ailing knight plays a chess match against Death to prolong his life. It’s a card which accurately represents how most people over the age of thirty view birthday cards anyway, except that most people don’t even get the fun of a chess match on their “special” day. This is not a card for birthday fans.

6. Happy___Birthday. This is the only card you’ll ever need (which is something of a shame, as there’s one more to go). If you keep a stock of these at home you’re all set for every eventuality. Can’t find a card with the right age on it? No problem, there’s space for you to fill it in (to the day). Forgot the birthday and you’re sending it late? No problem, you can just tell them you meant to send it as a happy-sixty-fourth-plus-two-days card. Know someone who hates birthdays and want to stick the knife in? No problem, just send it with their age plus a hundred and eighty days, half a year after their birthday. They won’t be expecting that!

7. Deforestation. We’ve just designed a lot of cards. Well six. That’s a lot if you’ve only got five fingers. It’s also a lot of paper and, as we should all know by now, paper comes from trees. Our seventh card therefore highlights the plight of our rainforests. A greeting card that urges people to save the trees is a brilliant contradiction and one we hope will appeal to the hypocrites among you.

April 15, 2011
7 Reasons That There is no Stigma Attached to my Spectacles

Regular readers of 7 Reasons might be not have been aware that half of the team has been expecting a rather special delivery for the last fortnight or so but we have and now, I can proudly announce, that it has arrived. My new spectacles are here. I’ve never had to wear them before and here are seven reasons that there is no stigma attached to wearing them whatsoever. None. At all. Got that?

Spectacle-ur*

1. Because I Got To Go To The Optician. And while I couldn’t write about my experiences there – because it’s been done far better already – I was able to enjoy a unique facility that is provided by my local Specsavers: Their waiting area overlooks the front door, just inside of which is a loose doormat. I have never been so royally entertained by slapstick in my entire life. The sight of almost all of the hapless and unsuspecting customers stumbling through the door was one of the most entertaining things I have seen in a long while. And they would have been able to enjoy the sight of me stumbling out onto the busy street half an hour later if this were not an optician. There is no stigma attached to physical comedy and even Norman Wisdom is cool. In Albania.

2. Because I Am Long-Sighted. I’m not near-sighted, short-sighted, ordinarily-sighted, conventionally-sighted or even averagely-sighted; I’m long-sighted. This is optician-speak for awesome. I can see a long way. I have super-sight. There is no stigma attached to being awesome. Superman is only unofficially awesome and he can get away with wearing his underpants on the outside of his trousers. I am officially awesome, therefore can easily get away with spectacles. And perhaps even the checked-shirt.

3. Wearing Spectacles Is A Necessary Public Service. Because I’m long-sighted, there’s almost nothing that I wouldn’t be able to see if I weren’t wearing them. The spectacles are actually needed to tame my sight. If it weren’t for them, the Hubble space telescope would probably be redundant and people as far away as Addis-Ababa would need curtains (if they don’t already). I’m wearing them for the greater good and there should be no social stigma attached to philanthropy.

4. I Need Them To Look At A Screen For A Long Time. I’m not going to guilt-trip the readers of 7 Reasons by suggesting that I would go blind writing my half of it if it weren’t for the glasses, but I would. Because I have to stare at a screen for a long time and I occasionally have to look at this image. Which always makes me try to stab myself in the eyes with a pencil. The glasses are necessary protection against this. If only they made spectacles for the mind.

5. Because Science Is Cool. Science is currently seen as hip and interesting, and glasses are a universally acknowledged signifier of scientific knowledge and capability. Watch any Hollywood movie – or Thunderbirds – and you know that the one in the glasses is the scientist; usually it’s Jeff Goldblum. Does Professor Brian Cox wear glasses? No. Do I (very occasionally) wear glasses? Yes. So to those unfamiliar with him, this makes me the better scientist. Right until I start to talk about quarks and molecular something-or-other and get distracted and end up talking about Ray-Bans.

6. Because They’re Ray-Bans. I love Ray-Bans. I’ve always worn them as sunglasses and I once got called a Ray-Ban geek by an assistant in a Ray-Ban shop, just because I knew the model numbers off by heart. And what the little codes on the arms mean. And I foolishly mentioned it out loud. Once. And my spectacles are Ray-Bans that I can wear at night and indoors without looking like a complete cock**. This is progress. Now the only place I can’t wear Ray-Bans legitimately is in bed when I’m asleep. And perhaps even then I could put opaque lenses in and use them as the world’s coolest eye-mask. Wearing spectacles is another step on my journey toward having Ray-Bans permanently affixed to my face. And Ray-Bans are cool: In my head, if not outside it.

7. Parenthood. I’m now a parent and, in years to come, when Byron Sebastian Fearns is making the long and daunting walk to his father’s desk to receive some sort of stern admonishment, I will need to move the glasses to the end of my nose so that I can look over the top of them while rebuking him. Because I know – from experience – that no telling-off is complete without that. And that putting clingfilm over the toilet bowl is frowned upon by people in glasses. Bugger. I used to love that.

*Yes, I did type this entire piece using only one hand.

**Sadly, they won’t prevent me from being one.

March 28, 2011