My spectacles keep slipping down my nose. They’ve been doing so roughly every 10 minutes since the dark day in 1980 when an optician in Stourbridge lodged some specs on this 13-year-old and blighted his life for ever.
Indoors or out, whatever the ambient conditions, down they slip. I’m writing this in my cool, calm, air-conditioned dressing room as I wait to appear on Loose Women on ITV. And down my specs are slipping. I push them back up, and back down they go. Up down up down up down, all day every day, for nearly half a century.
Opticians aren’t much help. They spend hours faffing around with which line you can read, and which is clearer – red or green – and all that carry on. And lately, they’ve started firing puffs of air at your eyeball to determine something or other. But when it comes to fitting the specs, scant attention is paid to whether the effing things will stay perched in the correct position. This seems to be something regarded as desirable, but not essential, a bit of a bonus.
I’ve tried applying antiperspirant to my face and sticking little nose pads to my glasses. Neither of which much helped. I’d all but given up hope when I came across a Pritt Stick-style product promising to be the answer to my prayers. It didn’t work. It made things slippier. Furious with disappointment, I tried actual Pritt Stick, which worked very well, but when I removed my glasses the pads remained attached to my nose.
I met my daughter’s friend from college the other evening. A quite delightful bespectacled girl from Shropshire. I saw she too had to keep pushing them up. Barely in her 20s, she has a lifetime of this to come. My heart bled for her. We can put people on the moon, a machine on Mars and have telephones that work without cords. So, please, please, if not for me then for the children, can somebody sort this?
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
