Something has caught me by surprise. I went to the opticians a few weeks ago to get a form filled out, as I’m going to get my driving licence this year, my new year’s resolution. He told me I could do with glasses, but I didn’t need them to drive, which was fair enough, as I’d noticed how my eyes weren’t as good as they used to be. After exhaustive shopping around for frames, I fell in love with a pair and am wearing them for the past few days. I love the look of them. I thought I’d have them as a sort of statement that I’m growing old but doing it with style.

I was unprepared for the fact that having worn them for a few days, the sight of the world without them is unacceptable. What I used to put up with now seems impossibly blurry, irritatingly indistinct, tiresomely vague. But, for someone unused to wearing prescription lenses, I am utterly unused to the concept of having to peer through something in order to see. I am forever peering over them in conversation, in the way I do when I’m wearing sunglasses – but of course that doesn’t have the desired effect, it makes things confusingly worse. I look around at people and think they can’t see me looking – because I think I’m wearing shades. My sense of distance and perspective is f****d, because I can’t use my peripheral vision any more, and I haven’t got the hang of the lens yet as regards distance. Things seem confusingly both nearer and farther away.

I’m writing my article today for Hot Press and my eyes are tired with the effort of looking through the glasses, if that makes sense. But, after a couple of hours, I took off the glasses to give my eyes a rest, and the computer screen is unreadable. It’s as if my eyes have stopped bothering doing what they’ve been doing for years, have discovered that clear vision is possible with glasses, and aren’t going to bother trying to focus without them now. They are on permanent strike.

In a few short days, I have become a man with glasses.