Speccy swotty four-eyes

September 2024

There is a small amount of repair work needed to the roof in a few places, and I invited Clf, the chap who'd worked on the roof before and two new companies to have a look at the job as well. Clf did not respond, one company arranged a time to visit and then didn't, and the other sent a lovely chap who flew a drone with a camera and did the quote there and then. Then, I procrastinated. In the past I have experienced the common phenomenon of a tradesman who doesn't really want the job quoting an outrageous amount, and I don't know what an outrageous amount is in this context, so I really wanted a second quote to compare. But I didn't get round to it.

The next chapter of the story involves my glasses. A few years ago my local independent sold out to a bigger organisation. In general I prefer an independent optician rather than one of the chains, and after a couple of visits I decided I'd look for a new independent. I found one in Warwick, but then a brand new practice opened in Leamington. That's where I went this week for a very thorough eye test, and they recommended a slight change to my prescription. What with super-thin lenses and varifocals it came to a stupendous sum, at which point I realised that the roofing quote was only about three-quarters of a pair of new glasses and I got in touch with the company and booked them in.

In the process of transferring from one optician to the other I got the old one to give me all of my records in a digital format, and then I passed these to the new optician. One of the reasons why I think I will stick with them is that they had a really good look at my history, and contacted me to propose a cheaper way of upgrading my glasses (taking the cost down to just equal to fixing my roof). And I gave them dad's old glasses to recycle for those in need, and then went through and photographed all my old glasses that I've kept since the age of about 16 and that's the picture at the top of the blog. I gave them five of my pairs to go off with dad's, kept two of the most recent, and we're putting the new lenses into another one.

The roofing company has been in touch to say that there's been a family emergency, so they need to rearrange the visit. We'll see which comes first - perfect vision or a non-leaking roof.

My left eye, September 2022