The politics of glasses

‘Where did you get those glasses?’ a stylish Italian gentleman asked me, gesturing at the acetate L.G.R. frames I wear for my myopia. I said Nairobi. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I make them.’ Luca Gnecchi Ruscone and I then had a conversation that brought back fond memories of adventures across the Horn of Africa, all focused through a history of spectacle lenses. Astigmatism and short sightedness has been with me since I was 13 in England, when I was forced to start wearing those heavy, black-rimmed NHS 524 specs. The singer Morrissey later made them seem cool, but I remember always taking them off to stumble blindly around at school dances so as not to frighten the girls.

As an undergraduate I fell in with men who wore corduroy jackets, smoked black tobacco and rarely ate food, so circular metal-rimmed eyeglasses went with the gaunt Bohemian style.