Archive for the ‘Humourous’ Category

One for All!

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I didn’t need glasses until my early forties, when my previously perfect sight let me down and suddenly I couldn’t see to read. I could still manage if I squinted and held things at arm’s length, but obviously this became somewhat impractical as time went on and one day my poor tired arms simply became too short! The optician told me this happens to everyone but to be honest this was wasn’t much of a comfort! So I ended up gradually collecting glasses to help in different situations.

I had reading glasses, and after a nightmare meeting when I ended up with a raging headache and very tired arms when I forgot my specs, I started keeping one pair at work, one at home, and one in the car just in case! Then I started to need help for the computer, and couldn’t really see the dash board clearly either. This meant another pair of computer specs for work, one for home, and one for the car! This worked until I’d go home with the work pair in my bag etc and then end up with all of them in the wrong location! Then of course there were my sunglasses, which I wore for driving, but still couldn’t see the dashboard.

Exhausted by all of this, and fed up with my worn out glasses that got squashed in handbags and were constantly bent, I went back to talk to the optician again. I still didn’t need glasses for distance sight, but we decided that the time had come to go for varifocal specs. The advantage for me was huge – one pair of glasses that I could leave on all the time, so they wouldn’t get worn out or left anywhere. I could also have them going dark in the sunshine, so instead of seven pairs of specs scattered around my life, I had one pair that I could keep on for all situations!

This was life changing! My varifocals let me see to drive, at the computer, the dashboard, and all my close up vision. I don’t have to take them off and they’re always with me. The lens goes dark so I don’t need sunglasses, and they are clear when I’m indoors. The lenses looked expensive when I first got a quote, but of course they were less than my vast collection of specs and look an awful lot nicer!

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Reading Between the Lines

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Out to dinner last night with five fifty-something friends, the conversation at one low point came round to counting grey hairs, checking out expanding waistlines and advancing wrinkles, and that other issue of ageing – reading specs! This was a hot topic because in the dimly lit restaurant only three of us could read the menu, which annoyed our waitress somewhat! The interesting thing was how six different people with different lifestyles have different ways of coping with needing help for reading….

Sue doesn’t go out to work but tends her small flock of specialist sheep which she hand rears. As she’s short sighted she doesn’t need specific reading specs yet, she just takes her distance glasses off! She then has to retrieve them from the barn or the paddock and wipe off any sheep dribble!

Phillip travels all over the world and is long sighted for distance and needs help for reading. He has Varifocals which go light and dark in the sun. This lets him see at any distance, and when work takes him to South Africa he has sunnies built in!

Jeremy is a GP, he uses vocational lenses for his desk and computer. He pulls them down his nose and looks over the top of them to talk to patients.

I’m bashing away at the keyboard all day, so I use an old pair of reading specs for the screen, and my strongest new ones to read small print.

Johnathan sells cars, he wears contact lenses, a distance lens in one eye and a close work one in the other. This means he can spot a potential customer a mile off and can always read the small print!

Rob just needs a little help for reading, but as a teacher he moves around the classroom all day, so he keeps ten pairs of ready readers in every useful location. He can also peer over the top of them to intimidate any troublesome students!

We had an excellent meal and over a few drinks we forgot about the issues of ageing – at least without our glasses on we can’t see the wrinkles!!

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Emergency Measures

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Over our years in practice we’ve seen many ingenious ways that people have made temporary repairs to broken spex. In the process they’ve often caused more damage than the original disaster that has befallen their frame! So here’s what to do and what not do in an eyewear emergency!

Firstly, prevention is always better than cure, so make sure you have an up to date spare pair of specs. A four year old prescription pair will not be useful if you’re illegal to drive in them or can only read huge print, so get online and pick up a cheap duplicate pair. Always make sure you have spare spex with you for driving, being stranded miles from home with a vehicle you can’t drive is not much fun.

When screws have dropped out of hinges we’ve seen frames held together with bent paper clips, plasters (a la Jack Duckworth!) twisted fuse wire and actually sewing around the joints! We’ve had lenses stuck together with black electricians tape, kid’s stickers and cling film, wrapped ingeniously all over the lens! Then there are the impromptu replacements; – a chap borrowing a side from his wife’s Leopard print frame, a side arm made out of a drinking straw, and a big metal staple hammered through a plastic frame bridge. We never fail to be impressed by the genius involved in make do and mend!

So what’s the easy way to deal with all of this? Stay calm! If you have a breakage, and no spare, use a bit of sticky tape to hold things together. Use clear tape and get someone who can actually see what they are doing to put it in place. Don’t get anything sticky inside the joints on frames. Some serious words of warning – NEVER USE SUPER GLUE!! It makes the lenses mist over and will permanently gum up joints which we then can’t repair. It also damages the finish on the frames, and more importantly, it never works. It’s safer and more effective to just use good old sticky tape. We’ll never forget the case of one unfortunate gentleman who had to go to A&E to have his specs removed from his face when he put them on after gluing and got them stuck to his ear…

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Learning to Love my Specs

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

I’ve been wearing glasses for about twenty years now, since my mid-teens. This is probably the worst time in a person’s entire life-span to become a speccy four eyes, just when every single cell of your body is causing you dread and angst! At least the glasses gave me something tangible to focus (!) my immense hatred on!

I could quite cheerfully have punched the optician when he cheerfully announced that my borderline prescription had tipped over into full blown short sightedness, and I needed glasses. The sulks over the next few weeks were immense! I hid them at the bottom of my rucksack and only dragged them out if my life depended on it. Quite often it really did, as I narrowly missed getting hit by cyclists and small children and wandered into roads thinking I was still on the pavement.

In my twenties I got contact lenses, and the world was changed into 3D and a landscape with birds flying, buildings with bricks etc. The real shock has been the last couple of years, when I’ve gradually drifted back into wearing specs. This new love affair started when I saw a Marc Jacobs frame and was instantly smitten. It was shiny black with sexy curvy sides, and with my chunky fringe and power bob I was transformed into an intellectual and serious force to be reckoned with. I’ve now become addicted to spex, with ten pairs in an array of colours doing all the work for me when it comes to accessorising.

I wish I’d done it years ago, as lenses were never perfectly comfortable on me and I was always smudging my makeup and fiddling with my eyes. So I’ve made peace with my myopia and at least I have an excuse to splurge on Designer fashion!

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Great Expectations

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Obviously you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and we do get glasses returned to us because clients aren’t happy with them. Fortunately it’s a really tiny percentage, and often with a bit of adjustment or explanation the specs go back home and give many years of happy sight! The main problem that we have to contend with is the unrealistic expectations of the client. We wish we could perform miracles of Physics but sadly we can’t! So what are the main problems that we would solve if we were granted Super-Powers?!

The No-Effort Varifocal Varifocals are wonderful lenses that give you back vision at all distances. They let you see near, far, and everywhere in between without swapping specs. The only drawback is that you so have to work with them, and compromise. You have to turn your head a little more to look to the side, you have to drop your chin slightly to see in the distance, and you have to get used to them when you first get them! Persevere, buy the best you can afford, and be grateful you don’t have to change glasses every time you try to focus at a different distance!

Wafer Thin Lenses – You can get lenses in thin material nowadays, but the higher your prescription, the more substance you have to your lens. You also get visible rings around the edges of the lens, which increase with stronger lenses. Brutal though it sounds, you have to be realistic. If your prescription is higher than minus 10 or plus 8, the strength is tricky to disguise. We can use the thinnest material possible, we can add coatings to reduce the rings, but your specs will never look as if there is no power there. Any optician who tells you otherwise is raising false hopes! So be thankful that you can reduce thickness by up to 60%, and be happy with the knowledge that lens materials are improving all the time, and we’ll do everything we can to make them look as good as possible for you.

Reading Specs That Focus Far Away – The magnifying power of your reading glasses is in inverse proportion to the focal length – in plain English, the more they magnify, the closer to your eye you’ll have to hold things! So for very fine detail you have to hold things close too, for bigger print you can have a weaker lens that focuses further away. If you need to see detail at near and far, you need to move yourself closer!

So there are our three wishes, if our Fairy-Godmother pops up any time soon, we’ll be as happy as our clients to get this little lot sorted!

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Even Barbie Goes Geek Chic!

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

It’s an interesting fact that the mere sight of a studious looking girl in glasses makes most men go weak at the knees. That Librarian image of a good girl who might just turn out to be bad if you can persuade her to whip off her specs and shake loose her hair is an ever popular fantasy that has been used in photo shoots, film and possibly real life since specs wear began.

This week, even Barbie dolls get in the act, as Mattel launches a new version of the blonde bombshell, complete with laptop, Bluetooth earpiece, and geeky chunky specs. The new model was chosen by fans and is based on the personality of a computer engineer. So if you want to be taken seriously by your male colleagues, and use all the deadly weapons at your disposal, then the look for girls is clearly computer geek chic.

Women are taken more seriously in the workplace, and are likely to be more successful in interviews if they wear glasses. Something work appropriate and stylish is a heavyweight, dark and single colour plastic frame, with the minimum of embellishment and the maximum of blue stocking appeal. It will lend a fashion edge to your boring work suits, and is sturdy and practical for every day wear.

Chunky rim plastics are perfect for high prescriptions, as they disguise your lenses. If you just wear specs for reading they are wonderfully intimidating if you slide them down your nose and peer over the top edge! They are also great for varifocals as you can choose a shape that’s deeper, giving you plenty of room for your distance, reading, and middle distance prescriptions.

With your bold and eye catching Librarian specs in place you only need to add a slick of bright lip colour to make it clear you’re one of the girls not the boys, and you’re good to go – just ask Barbie!

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Christmas Capers

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Opticians are called upon for more services than you would think, so we’ve been reminiscing over the mad, bad, and downright dangerous tasks heaped upon us during our years in Optics….you really couldn’t make it up!

A regular plea around this time of year is for emergency help with dressing up – well would you expect to see Santa without his cute little specs? We’ve supplied vintage and second hand frames for Father Christmas, numerous Harry Potter fancy dress outfits, Dr Who, that chap in the wheelchair in Little Britain and Eric Morecambe. Then there are historical re-enactments, the Sealed Knot, and an Elvis look-alike who was here to do a gig and had forgotten his shades. All of this takes many hours scrabbling around our archives, and trawling the net for pictures so we hand out the right thing.

Santa in Vintage Specs

Santa in Vintage Specs

Then there are the emergency situations where people lose or forget their specs. We’ve had then run over, eaten by dogs, put through the washing machine, and wrapped up in a present and then not found until Boxing Day! With so much to think about people do this kind of thing and then are desperate for specs so they can see what they’re carving at Christmas lunch.

Our other favourite is fanatics who know exactly what they want. We’ve sourced snooker frames as an ingenious present for a fan, and tracked down the exact frame that Heston Blumenthal wears for a wife who knew her husband loved them. We found a vintage Gucci for a lady who wanted to replace her beloved five year old pair, and hand glazed an antique tortoiseshell frame for a chap who had always wanted to wear them.

These jobs are always urgent of course, and we end up running down to the Post Office or even dropping them off ourselves if it’s local. All part of the service, and part of what makes our job fun. Santa would be proud of us for bringing our own little hint of Christmas magic!

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Making a Spectacle…..

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

We have a few spectacle wearers around the office here at the Internet Glasses Company, and their spec wearing anecdotes often come up in conversation. So here are a few of our favourites – any of them ring a bell with you?!

Steve – Technician – I started wearing glasses when I was fifteen. This was not a good age, and not good for my confidence when added to my brace and my lack of control of my suddenly gangly limbs. (Sounds gorgeous!)  I trod on them just before a really important football match, and as I was only on the team because they were desperate I had to act fast. I used some superglue to stick the lens back in. This had a dramatic effect, the lens went frosted and the frame got stuck to my left eyebrow. I nearly passed out from the fumes, and got hit by the ball because I couldn’t see out of the left side. I had to spend two hours waiting in casualty to have the frame removed, and had a bald eyebrow for weeks.

Lucy – Dispenser – I got some sunglasses made up when I worked for one of the multiple opticians. They were dead trendy huge Versace frames, and the workshop did tell me the frame was not ideal for my prescription, but I got them anyway. I wore them all the time, even when it wasn’t sunny. One day I wore them on the train, and this way hot guy kept looking at me. I was really excited until I got to work and discovered that one of the black lenses was still in the case. I’d spent all morning with one black lens and one totally clear. I started driving to work after that.

Charlie – Admin – I’m a disaster with my glasses. I went to Scotland to be best man at a wedding and forgot my reading specs. I had to give the speech wearing some pink leopard print ready readers that I borrowed off the bride’s mother. A lens popped out of my first pair of varifocals and I put it back in, then had blinding headaches all day. When I took them back to the optician he told me I’d put the lens in upside down. I left my photochromics on the windowsill one afternoon, and half of one lens got baked black in the sun. I then stuck them on to drive into town, and had one clear lens and one half coloured for about four hours. It was never quite the same again!

Sue – Admin – I had an old car with a really rubbish heater, and I always wore gloves to drive. One morning I reached up to wipe a smudge off the lens and got my glove caught on one of the screws, just as I had to get through the traffic lights. I had to stop in the middle of the junction to extricate myself, and ended up negotiating it with a bright red glove dangling off my specs.

So there you go – even us experts have our spectacular disasters! Anyone got any they’d like to share with us? Go on – mailing us will make us feel so much better!

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Just the Job!

Monday, September 28th, 2009

We all know that times are hard, and even if green shoots are appearing they’re taking their time in blossoming forth! During the credit crunch every job has to be fought for, so can anything give you the extra edge over your competitors? Well surprisingly, we might just have a suggestion for you……

Specsavers recently commissioned a survey to find out whether wearing glasses makes you a more favourable candidate in the eyes of employers. Now we all know that spec wearers have an image of maybe being a little bit more of a brain box, a bit geeky, a bit more studious. We all have that picture in mind of the school swot in oversized specs earnestly giving all the answers in class. Could it be true that the image still rings true?

Bright child in the class with all the answers!

Bright child in the class with all the answers!

Apparently the answer is yes! 68% of employers think that spec wearers are more intelligent and can be trusted, and as they apparently give a better first impression this could be the clincher in an interview. We blogged about this a while ago, the fact that in the workplace anything that gives you that edge is worthwhile, so this may be the time to ditch the contact lenses and return to your glasses. Just steer clear of too much bling and make sure they are suitable for your new workplace.

Glasses get the job

Glasses get the job

Glasses will be the first thing people notice about you, so make sure they’re sparkling clean and fashionable. Get online and find a trendy pair from as little as £9.99. www.TheInternetGlassesCompany.co.uk. Even if you don’t actually have a prescription then you can order specs with clear lenses, and no-one will be any the wiser – they’ll just think you are!

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Midsummer Madness!

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

In order to save you from the same fate as the unfortunates we’re going to tell you about now, we’re going to share some stories to make you think, so have a successful speccy Summer!

We knew the heat was on last week when the temperatures soared, but we’ve never had this problem before – a lady mailed us to order some glasses, which were urgent due to a calamity on Tuesday – she left her plastic frame on the dashboard of the car all  afternoon. the frame ‘went all bendy around the edges” one lens fell out on a gravel car park and she trod on the other one!!

Two different clients squashed their glasses – without cases – into bags and the frames snapped in the middle. Remember that glasses are not flat, they are curved!! With some frames there is a big space between the folded sides and the front. Shove them in a pocket and they’ll flatten and ultimately break – why are we telling you this – it’s really good for business!!

One young lady had a few too many Pimms at a BBQ, tried to take the same contact lens out twice (ouch!) damaged her cornea and has had to order specs as she can’t wear her lenses at the moment. A chap in charge of the school PTA BBQ had a few beers (well it is thirsty work) fell over on the way home, and has no idea where the specs went…..hope they didn’t end up in a burger bun!

Usually a couple of pairs go over board at this time of year, and some are lost in lost luggage. We will supply insurance quotes if you are in need of them!! Mail us for details. You are often covered with house contents if for instance the dog eats them, although the vet bill is another matter….

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