All the better to see you with.

I remember feeling utterly horrified when, at 8 years old, the optician told my Mum I needed glasses. I cried secretly for days and, when we picked them up a week later, I cried all over again. I simply hated the thought. They were brown. They were ugly. They made me look ugly. And everybody would notice.

Spending the majority of my formative years (well, up until about 28 as it turned out) feeling horribly self-conscious, I distinctly remember the near crippling sense of dread I felt that first day in class, knowing I'd have to put on my new and much-hated 'specs'. And sure enough, kids being the blunt, insensitive creatures they are at that age....they pointed, they laughed and echoes of "four-eyes" ricocheted around the room. Silently and choking back tears, I bowed my head over my schoolbook and hoped my long-hair might at least hide the hideous scaffolding on my face. I think I stayed that way for about the next 20 years.

If there was anything to be 'grateful' about, it was being diagnosed as long-sighted not short-sighted, which meant I'd only need glasses for reading, schoolwork and maybe watching TV. Despite my self-consciousness, I dutifully stuck with it in hope that my eyes would one day improve enough for me to triumphantly dump the specs and be able to read in class without actually missing words or whole lines of text in one go. (And for anyone who pushed me too far with the jokes, I also discovered the protective metal case the glasses came in was great for giving a swift whack upside the head.)

Besides, as much as I hated those first glasses (and I've had some hideous, fashion-deprived glasses over the years) they were still infinitely better than the geekier and even more ridiculed 'NHS glasses'. The ugly, thick blue/pink/brown glasses provided free of charge through the National Health Service to low-income families. Those poor kids who had to wear permanently wonky NHS specs always seemed to get beaten up, tripped up or were otherwise so uncoordinated that their glasses would soon be cracked, broken, missing a lens or else held together with bandaids. It just seemed to go with the territory.

Crazy thing is, the NHS-style glasses of the 70's (of which this was the best picture I could find), have become a much sought-after fashion accessory. NEVER would I have thought fashion-conscious, cool and trendy kids would be wearing NHS specs! How things change.

Anyhoooo, surprise, surprise my idea of miraculously fixing my long-sightedness didn't work. I still wear glasses for all the same reasons although I've been increasingly bad for wearing them, not least because I feel compelled to take them off when talking to people - they feel like a block, same as sunglasses do.

I've definitely always made a point to buy glasses that would be as inconspicuous as possible; plain, discreet, unremarkable, bland and even 'blendy-blendy' as the sales assistant described my last pair this week. When I bought them 2 years ago I thought I'd actually stepped out a little but looking back on it, I still went for frames that 'blended' with my hair colour and which I hoped no-one would really notice.

So, since there was money sitting unspent in my extended medical coverage at work, I decided to replace my glasses. As it happens my prescription has changed very little, if at all, for the last several years. I didn't 'need' to get new glasses this week but heck, if the money was there and about to go unused (since I'm changing jobs - thank goodness), then why the hell not get new specs? So I did. And I actually pushed the envelope a little and went outside of my regular comfort zone - mainly encouraged by the fact that glasses really have become such a major fashion accessory. Even people who don't need them are sporting funky or vintage and even NHS-like frames as a personal fashion statement.

The new, funkier pair

The 'blendy-blendy' pair

Okay so I didn't go to any extremes here, but - for the first time - I do have a couple of photos of me actually wearing them and, while normally hiding away my glasses, I even ventured so far as to put these pics on Facebook (admittedly after some gentle prompting). And now that I look at them, I actually don't even mind the blendy-blendy pair. I also have another pair where I previously tried to jazz it up a little, since I found some funky frames at a Dollar Store and got prescription lenses put in for a great discount - but I don't have a photo yet.

Anyway, that was an incredibly long-winded way of saying, after 35 years, I seem to have finally come to terms with the fact I wear reading glasses. Maybe this is all part of that wonderful sense of 'self-acceptance' your supposed to get in your forties.....is it? (Even if I do still choke on accepting the word 'forties' in terms of myself.)