Speculation

My spectacles have arrived. Technically they arrived a week or so ago, but I spent the intervening time circling them warily, reluctant to actually open the package and try them on.

Let's be straight here - when it comes to my work, I have near-superhuman powers - ghosting, blurs, indecipherable writing, the faintest of survey marks from a couple of hundred years ago.... I can interpret them, no problem. Colleagues marvel at my ability to notice things that eluded them entirely.

But what was the number of the bus that hit me? No idea.

So - very reluctantly - I tried the spectacles. And lo, suddenly I could see the temperatures on the weather chart during the news broadcasts! Before, I hazarded a guess as to what the digit was - an 8? a 6?. I thought of it as my approximation of the meteorologists'approximation of the weather forecast. They never get it right, so I figured accuracy on my part wasn't necessary - a ballpark temperature has worked fine for me for an awfully long time.

But this evening, I've spent the evening sliding the glasses on, then off, looking in wonderment at captions, tv credits, telephone digits, & the amount of dust on my cd player (oops).

However, I have to say I question whether the spectacles will materially improve my life. In fact, I fear it may lessen it. This brutally unforgiving vision means that objects are dirtier. People are uglier. I can see the paint peeling in one corner of the room.

But without them...well, does it really matter if I can't read on the train station monitors how many carriages make up the 7.08 evening train home?

It may take awhile before I bother wearing them regularly. While life is clearer, it also makes it a little less kind. Photographers pay good money for a quality soft focus or diffuser, while I have it for free. Why should I be so keen to abandon that soft friendly haze, if clarity will only result in disillusionment?

Given it has digits, I decided to blip (part of) my telephone rather than the spectacles. It's a great big old phone; a massive box made of Queensland maple in the late 1930s and comes complete with a timber ledge to rest your notepad on. It has old fashioned bells on it, a pre-bakelite receiver, and a ring on it to wake the dead (or my neighbours, much to their disgust) ... and yes, it still works just dandy. Mostly I chose to blip it because - aside from the digits - I like the texture of the pitting and the chips on the dial, and a little of the timber box at the edge.