MonoMonday: "My Best Friend"

Dollykgray has asked for us to use the theme "My Best Friend" for today's MM.

Of course my real best friend is my gorgeous (and longsuffering!) wife and Blip Editor, but she's appeared on MM before and wasn't in a hurry to appear again. And my best friend from schooldays lives in the USA and isn't immediately available for today's photo.

But my glasses are a very good friend too. Having become a bit short-sighted and astigmatic at the age of eleven I've been so grateful for my specs all my life. I'm now a bit less short-sighted than I was (it can go either way, or stay much the same, as you get older) but of course as you get older your focal range gets less so for 20 years I've been very grateful for varifocals. Regular followers of my journal will know that I contrived to lose my specs in the garden a couple of weeks ago; I had to manage with an old pair until last Friday when I collected the lovely new ones shown in the photo.

I guess needing specs myself at an early age helped to cultivate my interest in how the eye works and the health of the eye and therefore helped to lead me to my career which I thoroughly enjoyed - another reason to regard them as a friend. Furthermore that lead to my interest in optics which helps my photography - wonderful!

This afternoon we had a walk by Swallow Pond, a local nature reserve in the Rising Sun Country Park. The extra shows a duck who got too close to a coot's baby: it got chased away pretty smartly!