I have finally acquired a pair of reading glasses. I should probably have got them at least a decade ago. I have been using magnifying glasses since 2008. I bought them initially for the only things that I had difficulty reading: “sell by” and “best before” dates on food packets. I always kept at least one magnifying glass in the kitchen and didn’t think it was worth getting reading glasses just for that. Since 2012 I have generally carried a portable magnifying glass in my pocket, prompted by the difficulty of reading a menu in a dimly-lit branch of a well-known brasserie chain one evening.

My ability to read small print lessened gradually, and I have been able to work around it most of the time. Using a Kindle, or other ways of reading text on a screen, I can adjust the font size of most things I read. Most of the books that I have read “on vinyl” (as described here) have decent-sized text on good quality paper, unlike most of those paperbacks that I read in the 1970s and 80s. If the light is good enough – and daylight is best of all – I can still read most of the books that I have bought in the last 15 years without any kind of magnification. Occasionally, on reading binges (the last major one lasted from autumn 2019 through to the following spring), I have read substantial parts of some books using magnifying glasses. That’s my main memory of “A Place of Greater Safety” by Hilary Mantel. I bought it on Kindle and also had a paperback copy, and I took a “blended” approach to the book (as described in this 2016 piece) when I read it at the end of 2019. I recall late nights reading the paperback edition with the largest magnifying glass that I have, not wanting to use a screen in the hour before bed.

Ten days ago I had my first eye test since 2011. It was free, for the same reason I can now travel free on local transport. Yesterday I collected my first pair of reading glasses, immediately after a funeral service in a local chuch. I had hoped to pick them up beforehand but ran out of time. I used a magnifying glass to read parts of the order of service, possibly for the last time. The first thing that I read with my new glasses on was that same order of service.

Before bed I flicked through a couple of books and didn’t need a proper reading light, as I have in recent years. The ceiling light, with my glasses on, was enough. I re-read the first 30 pages of Douglas Coupland’s “All families are psychotic” but I am not in a reading frame of mind right now. The belated acquisition of a pair of reading glasses might prompt another reading binge, but I doubt it. The main thing I am looking forward to is doing the puzzles in the weekend paper without having to hold a magnifying glass in one hand.