My moment of madness in the opticians

Foolishly I chose new specs in the village optician’s after a long lunch: a rather outré design that I might not have chosen had I been completely sober. For the past decade I’ve worn a retro design I’d first admired in David Bailey’s striking black and white photographs of Ron Kray. Thinking it might be time for a change of style to reflect my invalid passivity, and the hairless dome of my surprisingly small skull, I’d gone in a moment of madness for a pair of John Lennon’s hippie silver circles.

Three weeks later, I returned to the shop to try them on with the new prescription lenses fitted. It was only then, studying my face and new glasses in the mirror, that I realised that my eyebrows and eyelashes had also gone. And my eyes were grotesquely puffy, like Henry Cooper’s used to be after only a couple of rounds. Hairlessness and puffiness were magnified horribly by the jam jar-bottom thickness of the lenses. I peered incredulously at my reflection. However, personal vanity has never been one of my besetting sins, perhaps with good reason, and I tried to look pleased while making out an enormous French cheque for a large amount of money.

The next day, my lack of eyebrows and eyelashes magnified by my new specs, I took a taxi down to Marseille for a CT scan. The driver was Remi, the owner of the taxi firm. Remi is in his mid-fifties, has a trademark Teddy Boy quiff and is so entirely masculine he is a credit to us all. Remi has driven me to the Marseille hospital and back twice before. On both occasions I asked him searching questions about French politics and for his thoughts on the possibility of right-winger Éric Zemmour throwing his chapeau into the ring.