Maybe the hot optometrist knew I had memorised the letters on the chart

Truth be told, I should have gone to Specsavers years ago. A rare combination of vanity and meanness kept me in Penneys €2 glasses — the ageing reader’s equivalent of the training bra — for way longer than was sensible, and I only succumbed to the inevitable because I was exhausted from having to put the glasses on and off a million times while watching football on television.

Still, I made my wishes clear to the Hot Optometrist: I needed to be able to watch football on TV without the constant on and off business and, citing the aforementioned vanity, I didn’t want to wear glasses. Sadly, my eyesight has not deteriorated to the point where I didn’t spot him giving me a sly once over when I mentioned how vain I was: for the record, I always look that red and weather-beaten when I’m cycling home from the gym, Mr Judgy Hot Optometrist.

Anyway, my demands listed, we set about testing the old mince pies.

Eye tests these days are quite unsatisfying because you’re never sure if you’ve got the answer right. There’s a lot of ‘which of these images is sharper’ going on, but without any clarification as to whether you’ve picked the right one.

Obviously, I still tried to cheat. Another of my charming traits — which I only shared with the Hot Optometrist at the end of the appointment — is my wild competitiveness, so even though I had come voluntarily to Specsavers seeking their help to see properly, I now tried everything in my power to convince them I could see perfectly. Reader, I memorised the letters on the chart. I couldn’t help it. And even though there was a tiny rational voice in my head pointing out that I was literally doing myself out of the help I clearly needed, it turns out my hearing isn’t great either. So as the letters became more blurry, I became more certain of what they were. I don’t know why I did this.

There followed a period of intense concern when, convinced the Hot Optometrist was spending longer on my left eye than my right, I self-diagnosed a brain tumour and took the HO’s relative silence for him building up the courage to tell me what he’d seen. Of course it turned out that my eyes and their environs are boringly normal — though I did extract from the HO the information that I’m two years behind what he’d expect to see at my age, which means that technically, I won the eye test.

My prize was two pairs of glasses that do two different things and a lot of tedious information about my PRSI, the Government and two pairs for the price of one. To be fair, the tedious stuff was delivered in such a joyful tone — as though it were notification of an engagement or a new baby — that I did wonder if I would leave the shop with more money in my pocket than I’d had coming in. I needn’t have worried: in spite of all the two for one and PRSI positivity, I still ended up with a bill for €260.

When the HO had finished with me it was apparently time to choose my frames. I asked if I had to do it today, and the sales assistant kindly pointed out that they couldn’t make up my prescription if they’d no glasses to put them in. She urged me to choose my favourites, which, since I didn’t want glasses in the first place, was a little like asking me to select my preferred form of execution.

I sat down then for a bit and looked at Instagram, where Kathryn Thomas was literally trying on frames in her (I suspect, bigger) branch of SpecSavers. Hers looked great so I decided to get the same ones, but they didn’t have them.

What they did have was a lovely old woman also choosing frames who seemed to be having an even worse existential crisis than I was. ‘Here,’ she said to me, trying on a pair of green frames, ‘what are these like? I haven’t a f***ing clue what I’m doing.’ I told her they went with her coat, and she seemed happy enough with that.

A week later I took delivery of my new glasses which look exactly the same as my old Penneys ones except they’re 130 times the price. Given that, I vowed as I left the shop to take proper care of these ones and not just turf them into my bag without their case or leave my potato-secreting fingerprints all over the lenses.

A day. That’s how long my good intentions lasted. Still, two years, eh? Once again, winning at life.