A pair of spectacles

My everyday specs - a pair of Nebbs, bought at the crest of the nerd-glasses wave from Moscot on Orchard Street, on a very hot day in July 2008. 

On their first outing, two people commented on them.  The first in the office: “I like your glasses - very Lower East Side...”; the second in the airport: “cool glasses.” And then nothing since.  

I flew through the night in a booze-and-valium haze, arriving home on my birthday as my wife woke up. We picnicked in Hyde Park, eating food from another time zone, which seemed just a little exotic. My six-month-old son sat on my chest and giggled, and the quote that came to my mind now sits beneath a photo from that day: “The meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”  

I don’t replace my glasses very often, and what struck me was that I could see clearly for the first time in years. Walking round the park that morning, the world had sharp edges I had never noticed before.