SAT ON MY FACE LIKE A PLASTIC GARGOYLE

Like a class with two unruly pupils, my eyes began to let me down when I was 13. That's when I started wearing glasses for my short sight.

I've worn them ever since and even now as I type they are sat, like a constant bystander watching the traffic, on the bridge of my nose. They are the original face-hugger.

Of course they aren't the same glasses I had in my young teens. They were prescription specs made of thick black plastic. Very plain. Very simple. I blame Joe 90 and those crew-cut guys at NASA who always wore short sleeve white shirts and black ties and had hairy tanned arms..

I haven't always worn Joe 90 glasses though. Like a barometer of mood, my gigs have reflected my disposition and how I saw the world. They have also deflected every insult that non-bespectacled folk could invent: speccy, Mr. Magoo, swat, bookworm and that most original of all slurs, speccy four eyes.

As a young hippy I wore John Lennon penny rounds. I went through quite a few pairs of these, all different sizes of penny. They were either silver or gold in colour. They were all from opticians and all had springy ear hooks. For a while I was the fifth Beatle. I bet you can't get them now.

I did go through a phase of huge egg-shaped specs too. They were called reactalights and were supposed to darken as the sun came out. They were a huge hit with vampires.

Glasses and girls never really went together. They get in the way of snogging and let's face it, who wants to go out with a 14 year old Professor of Astronomy.

I once bought a pair of CHiPS style metallic mirror-finish glasses from a garage. You know, like the cool kids, for the summer. They did look Hollywood and I did book a few speeding Mustang drivers but without my prescription they were nigh on useless. I would have to wait decades before I had prescription sunglasses, a revelation so astounding that I have named them the single most most important human achievement in history. I did go to Specsavers.

Forty two years and twenty odd pairs of specs later I have come full circle. My thick plain black glasses are more or less what I wore when I first set out on this blurry journey to find the focal point. Now they have invisible split lenses and I have another darker pair for the summer. I still blame Joe 90 and those guys at NASA.

Have you made a spectacle of yourself readers?