New sunglasses

Disappointingly I managed to lose my sunglasses of long standing last week.

I blame the weather, it was not sunny, so my glasses were not on my nose but rather the top of my hat.  Had they fallen from my eyes I would have noticed their absence rather sooner than I did as they slipped off my hat.

I know the exact stile which caused the problem.  It is not so much a stile as two large horizontal timbers set up in such a way as to hinder rather than assist the walker.  Last year I had seen a woman of slim proportion step gracefully between the two timbers.  In my reckless folly I imagined I was made of the same stuff.  I wasn’t, I blame the daysack of course.

When I looked back after some minutes walking I saw someone else at the stile and stopped to watch as it was so unusual to see someone there.  I suppose it was curiosity as to how he was going to get over the obstacle.  He seemed to look in my direction and be in at least two minds about what he intended to do.

He had found my glasses and was wondering if they were mine and if they were could he attract my attention with a shout.  I worked this out later of course.  The third option he had was to pocket them.  This was his chosen route.

The glasses were nothing special, certainly not expensive, they were actually pretty tired.  But they were mine and we had shared enough adventures for them to have become an integral part of things.

Time to get another pair.  Not the same pair, because there were improvements I could make, and here was an opportunity to do so.

Firstly they had to be wrap around and have a high impact rating.  No need for them to stop bullets but plenty of reason for them to stop some pretty high speed fragments as I work outside in an environment where fragments of stuff I would not want in my eyes tend to zoom about.

My previous pair had a semi-mirrored finish to them and I came not to like that.  I like a low visibility profile, flashy and indeed, flashing sunglasses never sat well with that approach.  I am no Ninja, and nor do I set out to be, but given a choice between a hi-viz jacket or a dull earth tone in the countryside, I go for the dull.  I leave the hi-viz to council workers and others that think they need the attention.

Protection against UVA, UVB and whatever other death rays that the sun has emitted for eternity but our eyes have failed to evolve protection against (surely its not all marketing) is a given.  Well I take it on trust its a given because I don’t know how to test it and there are plenty of stories about how many sunglasses fail to give the protection they are meant too (more marketing dirty tricks?).

Finally I made my choice, a pair of wrap around safety glasses with smoke coloured lenses with the added bonus of being significantly lighter than my lost pair of Bolle glasses.

The final addition was one of those safety straps to stop them being lost when not on your nose.  Well, not quite, a bit of string serves that purpose, its just as functional, just does not get the same marketing push.

So hopefully I will get many years of use out of these sunglasses.