Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

A pair of glasses.

When I retired, I thought fantastic, now I have all the time in the world to do everything I want whenever I want.

But it’s not true.

All you people out there on the cusp of retirement or looking forward to a long lazy stage of life where time stretches endlessly to be filled as you like it with Rhine cruises and golf or spring days in the garden with wine and memories on the verandah, beware.

None of it is true.

What your time will actually be filled with is a wandering search and a last-chance retracing of the steps that led you to lose your glasses.

I am short sighted, but my near sight has always been perfect, so to read or examine anything in detail I have always taken off my glasses.

This has meant finding my glasses in interesting places after a series of wild detours.

If Odysseus was here, he would understand.

A garden seat, a bookshelf, the kitchen bench behind the toaster, on top of the speaker cabinet in the lounge room, the bathroom vanity, the car passenger seat well, a carport tool shelf, and finally perhaps the most unsettling location of all — a bush track about three kilometres from home.

These are all places I have left and eventually found my glasses.

Miraculously, I have never actually lost a pair of glasses.

But I have lost minutes, hours and days in the long and winding search.

Sometimes there are new discoveries along the way.

If I run out of possible locations, as a final act of desperation, I might search a space like the laundry on the off-chance I went in there by accident or in a waking dream.

A couple of weeks ago I searched my daughter’s old bedroom, which had been no-man’s land for about 15 years until it became my music room.

I thought I might have left my glasses on the bookshelf, but I got distracted by reading extracts from teenage vampire fantasy novels.

I still don’t understand the appeal of blood and big teeth, but it was a valuable insight into the psyche of teenage girls.

And it wiled away an hour or so.

A while ago I came across a full cup of coffee while on a glasses search of the study.

I think it been there a few days because there was a bug floating on top.

I thought it would be a shame to waste it, so I put in the microwave.

While it was re-heating I decided to search the art room, but I got distracted by a half-finished landscape.

I mulled over the choice of pthalo green which leapt out like a loud Torana, so I decided to have a quick daub with Australian leaf green to soften the effect.

Of course, I completely forgot about the coffee in the microwave which was discovered by the Chief Gardener the next day.

I then had to drink week-old, twice re-heated coffee in front of her, so she didn’t think I was a wastrel.

These are the pitfalls of the dedicated spectacles hunter, but there is a solution.

Because of a lifetime of looking for glasses with no glasses, I now have cataracts.

During the surgery process there is a chance to give me sparkling new lenses, meaning I won’t need glasses ever again.

See? There is hope as well as lost glasses at the end of the tunnel.

John Lewis is a former reporter at The News.