Life through a lens

So you know how it is when you spend a small fortune on some new glasses, even though you're massively in debt and lunch at Pret a Manger is a hugely extravagant treat, and then you get up a bit earlier than normal and wash your hair and put on your make-up because you know that you're going to be looking at yourself in the mirror in Specsavers and you don't want to vomit in public, and you're a bit nervous because you bought the glasses about a fortnight ago and they're normally ready in 24 hours but because you've got such a stupid astigmatism, they take several thousand working weeks and now they're finally ready but it was so long ago since you tried them on that you can't remember what they're like and you're not sure you're going to like them because maybe you allowed your ego to be massaged by the surprisingly persuasive sales assistant, which you never ever allow to happen, and then you arrive at Specsavers and they pull out your new frames and you put them on and they seem black and fifties and cool just like you remembered but then you look in the mirror and with your blonde hair you look like that awful TV presenter on Channel 4 who's apparently South African even though I thought she was American, and she always snarls at all her makeover victims that they've been so irresponsible for sunbathing for ten minutes in the early Eighties or having two puffs on a cigarette when they were fifteen, and that they've consequently destroyed any chance they had of being remotely attractive without surgery, because of course she's never done anything as unhealthy as stand in a shop that was selling Silk Cut and if the sun comes out she zips herself into a special black-out vacuum container and remains there until dusk?

Well, that's what happened to me this morning, and then I got into work and someone did that thing when they don't know if they like something so instead of saying 'Nice skirt' or whatever, they just state the obvious, i.e. 'Morning Jane... New glasses...' and I said 'Yes' and they think they've got points just for being observant whereas I know for sure that someone only employs that tactic if they don't like what they see. But it doesn't matter because three other people since then have actually said the glasses looked nice, unprompted - one person even said 'Very stylish'. And when I looked in the mirror mid-morning, I realised that the glasses are fine, it's my hair I don't like. I'll keep you posted.