Money is always scarce, when you’re a student, so it’s important to spend it wisely. It is possible to spend three or four years at university, studying hard, and come out with a fantastic degree without ever really getting away from books and computers. Even when you’re engaged in the most arduous research, and preparing for the next round of exams, it is important to have something to look forward to. And so it was that my flatmate, Chloë, and I found ourselves discussing plans for the Summer holidays, even as the rain went past sideways outside. Neither of us knew what would be happening after we graduated, but this could be our last opportunity to have a decent break this side of… retirement, presumably. Chloë had a fair idea that she fancied training to become a History teacher. I hadn’t dismissed the possibility, but my heart was not set on it, as hers was. We had got to know each other during our first term at university. We were both studying European History, and both had rooms just over a mile from the university buildings. Our lectures finished at the same times on the same days, so we found ourselves walking home together. First of all, it was for companionship. Later it was out of friendship and, as the nights drew in, also as a matter of safety. We also spent a fair amount of time together in the evenings – either working or socialising – and when it came to finding a flatmate for the following year, Chloë was the obvious person. Fortunately, she felt the same way about me. A holiday together seemed the ideal way to relax and unwind, without any additional pressures. We toyed with the idea of jetting off somewhere warm for a couple of weeks. Somewhere where we could spend all day, every day, relaxing by a pool, cocktail in hand, checking out the boys… Neither of us had ever had a holiday like it in the past, and were unsure whether we would really enjoy it, or just get bored and look forward to coming home. And there were so many resorts to choose from, so who was to say which the best one would be? Italy? Spain? Greece…? Our conversation meandered on to places we would like to go, one day – and things we would like to see or do. True, there was a certain amount of sunbathing thrown in, but there were things to eat, places to see, experiences to be had. In short, there was life to be lived. It was Chloë who suggested the idea of Interrailing. I had never heard of it, but the more we talked about it, the better it sounded. 15 days of train travel anywhere in Europe over the course of a month for just £300 – and a chance to go and visit places I’d never been to, and in some cases, had never heard of. As we started to talk about it, we realised there were just so many places that we’d never be able to see them all. The other thing was, if you could catch a night train, you didn’t have to worry about accommodation costs, either. Before we knew it, a plan was beginning to take shape. We already knew that our final exam would be on 7th June, so decided to give ourselves a week to recover, and set off on 14th, returning to England on July 13th. That way, we might even be able to find part time jobs when we got back from our trip, to cover while others had their Summer holidays. We were never going to agree on absolutely everywhere to go, so gave ourselves a week to come up with three places each we absolutely felt that we had to see, and then to base our itinerary around those lists. Chloë had an uncle and aunt living in Vienna, so I agreed that we could go and visit them for a few days, without it counting as one of her three picks. Besides, it would give us a bit of a break from travelling, and a few days where we didn’t have to worry about where our next meal was coming from. Creating my list was hard. It wasn’t where to put on the list, as what to leave off it. My interests in 20th Century history meant that I opted for Amsterdam, to visit Anne Frank’s house, Munich, with its associations with the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1923 and Berlin. I was a little concerned they were a little close together, and where we would go after doing Germany, but I still had Chloë’s three choices to make up the rest of the trip. I wasn’t surprised when she told me that Rome was top of her list. I knew she had a particular interest in the Romans. I imagined that she would also choose somewhere else in Italy, like Verona or Naples, so I was a little surprised when she selected Cologne and Arles, in France. As she explained, both were also famous for their links with the Romans. Now we had our list of places to go, our itinerary didn’t need much tinkering, until we were pretty happy with it. London – Amsterdam – Berlin – Cologne – Munich – Vienna – Rome – Monte Carlo (why not?) – Arles – Paris, and that left us a few days where we could still hop on a train and go and see something else, as the mood took us. It also gave us the chance to book some accommodation, so we could take advantage of cheap room rates, and not find ourselves arriving somewhere, and then having to look for a room for the night. It also gave us some flexibility, and several nights on trains, as well. We met by the entrance to platform one at Liverpool Street Station at half past seven on the 14th June. I arrived slightly before Chloë, but it wasn’t hard to spot her as she made her way towards me – long, brown hair tied back in a pony-tail, a white tee-shirt and blue shorts, which only served to highlight her ample curves, and the light glinting off her glasses. I was a little surprised she was wearing them. I knew she had them, but most of the time, she wore contacts – and I suspect most of the people on our degree course didn’t know she even had them. As she explained to me, once we were on the train to Harwich, they were a much better option if you were going to be spending the night sleeping on a boat or train. Besides, she had insisted that I wear my glasses, too. I felt I could cope perfectly well without them, as I didn’t need them all the time. However, she didn’t want to miss a connection anywhere while I was squinting myopically at a departures board. She had a point. They were only -0.75 and -1.25, although I knew I needed something a little stronger. I’d had them the best part of a year, and was trying to hold out until just before we went back to uni to get a new pair. The night crossing on the Stena Britannica was a fairly comfortable one – if you can ever be comfortable when lying on a floor for the night. We arrived at the Hook of Holland feeling like we could have done with an extra couple of hours’ sleep, and might have got them if our train to Amsterdam had been a direct one, but we had to change a couple of times, so we were still feeling jaded when we arrived in Amsterdam in mid-morning. By that time, we were hungry. We had refused to pay the inflated prices of the food on the ferry, so we quickly sought some refreshments at the station, before wandering off to find our beds for the night. Even so, we were a little too early, but as we had paid a deposit up-front, and the room was ready, we took the opportunity to have a shower, change clothes, and go for a wander around the city. Amsterdam was a fascinating place, and we spent three nights there. We mostly ate fast food, but were aiming to have something more typical of the local food at least once in each place. I didn’t think that my Goudaburger really counted, so we found a small restaurant in a back street and ate our hutspot and Dutch apple pie there. Th language wasn’t a problem as everybody really did seem to speak English. The canals were mesmerising, and Anne Frank’s house was a delightful, if rather sobering, experience. We both enjoyed the fairly laid-back approach to life, and had a bit of a laugh at the sex museum. It was rather galling when Chloë was offered a job, but I wasn’t. I might be quite innocent (well, maybe not), but I am not naïve. We would happily have spent an extra day wandering around Amsterdam, but we didn’t really fancy the night train, as it arrived in Berlin at about twenty past four in the morning. A quick bit of research later, and we found ourselves doing a day trip to Brussels, as the night train from there arrived at a rather more civilised 8.20. Although we were only there for twelve hours or so, we still had plenty of time to explore the centre of the city, taking in the Grande Place and the Mannequin Pis, and to wander down some of the little side streets. A meal of mussels and chips, and a couple of bottles of Belgian beer each, and we were more than happy to take our seats on the train early, ready for our overnight journey to the capital of Germany. Again, we had booked ourselves three night’s accommodation in Berlin. Based on our experience of Amsterdam, this would be enough time to see the main sights, experience a little of the culture, and still leave us things to see and do there if we decided to come back later in life. We took a day tour of the city by bus. Is it my imagination, or is it only England where you get double decker buses for public transport, but they are everywhere when it comes to sightseeing tours? We visited the Reichstag, saw the Berlin Wall memorial and the Brandenburg gate, and so much more… We ate Berliner Wurstsalat and drank Weißbier. Personally, I wasn’t a fan, and ordered a coke while Chloë finished mine off. The beginning of week two, and we were off to Cologne – one of Chloë’s selections. Again, we spent three nights there, exploring the sights of the city. At Chloë’s insistence, we went to the Römisch-Germanisches Museum. It’s not somewhere I feel the need to return to, but she found it fascinating – and I had dragged her around Anne Frank’s house – so I did my best to enjoy it. We climbed to the top of the cathedral tower. The views were amazing, and you could see the river Rhine stretching out for miles in both directions. And all along it, there were boats, plying their trade. I was glad that Chloë had persuaded me that I needed to wear my glasses while we were away, as I would have missed so many of the details of that fantastic view if I had left them behind. Our second day in Cologne wasn’t really spent in Cologne at all. We hopped on the train down to Bonn, and spent the day there, taking in Beethoven’s house and some of the other historic buildings in the centre of the city. It was worth a visit in itself, but by leaving our rucksacks in our hotel room in Cologne, we didn’t have to worry about finding accommodation for the night. We had a late lunch at the “Zum Blauen Affen” beer garden, before making our way back to Cologne for the night. After leaving Cologne, we planned on a leisurely day’s travel down the Rhine Valley towards Frankfurt, in order to catch the night train to Munich. Chloë was quite intrigued to see the confluence between the Rhine and the Mosel, to break the journey up a bit, so we boarded a slow train to Koblenz as soon as we were ready. The wind had picked up a bit, and there was a little rain in the air, so we were quite happy to be sitting on a warm, comfortable train, which seemed to have about a hundred stops between Cologne and Koblenz. Our train was just pulling into Remagen, when Chloë suddenly said: “Remagen. That’s where that bridge was in the Second World War, isn’t it? You know – the one the Allies used to cross the Rhine before it collapsed ten days later. How about we change our plans and go and have a look?” I was quite content sitting in my seat, watching the World go by, but we were here, and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. I grabbed hold of my anorak and rucksack, and attempted to put both of them on at the same time as I got off the train. Turning to check that Chloë was following me, my attempts to dislodge the hood of my anorak caused my glasses to go flying. I made a grab for them with my left hand. I got fingertips to them, causing them to hit the side of the train. I watched in disbelief as they lodged in the small gap between the train and the platform. I was about to make a grab for them as the train started to move, causing the frame to snap on the bridge of the nose. When the train had gone, I picked up the remaining half of my glasses. Even the remaining lens was useless, as it had a thick scratch in it where the train had dragged it along the platform before the frame broke. Before our trip had started, I would have described myself as a part-time glasses-wearer, and even then, only when I really had to. However, I had grown accustomed to seeing things much more clearly over the last ten days, and the blur seemed worse than I ever remembered it being in the past. Bravely, I announced that I could still see reasonably well, in response to Chloë’s concerned questioning, so we made our way down the Alte Strasse and on to the river to see where the bridge had once stood. We spent a fascinating hour inside and outside the museum there before making our way back to the train station. “What are you going to do about your glasses,” Chloë asked, once we were back on the train. “I’m not sure what I can do. I didn’t need them all the time, so I shall just have to travel around Europe in a blur. I’ve still got a bit of the left lens if I really need to see things clearly. Do you have any other ideas? “You could get your eyes tested when we get to Vienna. I’m sure my aunt would act as an interpreter for you.” “How long are we planning to stay in Vienna? It usually takes a week or so for glasses to be ready, and I thought we were only going to spend three or four days there. I don’t need a sight test – well, I probably do – but what I need most is to be able to see well enough to enjoy the places we’re visiting.” “You could take photos of everything and then look at them on your phone. That would work. I had to do that once when I went out for a day and had a problem with my contact lenses.” “Like you said, that was for a day. We’ve got another two and a half weeks of this trip, yet.” “I’ve got my old pair at the bottom of my rucksack. Why don’t you try those?” “They’ll probably be much too strong, but go on then.” Chloë was already digging down to the very bottom of the bag in an attempt to reach the case. You could see its hard shape outlined by the bag, and you could see her hand making its way through the layers of carefully packed clothes to reach the glasses. It took a couple of minutes, and a little bit of unpacking, for her to reach the case. Once she had retrieved it, she handed it straight to me. “There you go. Try them.” I could see surprisingly well through the left lens, although it was clearly still a bit stronger than I needed, but everything through the right lens was just a blur. “How strong are these?” “The right eye is -4.25, the left eye is -3.00.” “That’s quite a difference. And how strong are the glasses you’re wearing?” She took them off, as if that would help her to remember her prescription. “These? The right eye is -5.00, and the left is -4.00. It has started to catch up. Try them.” I wasn’t sure what benefit there might be from going from a pair of glasses which was too strong to one that was even stronger, but I did as I was told. Unsurprisingly, they did nothing to improve my vision, so I put the weaker pair back on, to try and decide whether I could wear them or not. “How long have you had glasses?” Although I had shared a room with her for the last year, I had never realised what a memory Chloë had for dates and numbers. When she was ten, she had started to become short-sighted in her right eye. When she was eleven, she needed -0.75 in her right eye, but her left eye was still perfect. Her father had suggested that she wear a monocle. As her eye exam at the age of twelve had showed that she now needed -0.25 for her left eye, as well as an increase to -1.25 for her right, that was when she had got her first glasses. She had worn them full time from the first day, as her parents were concerned that she was developing a lazy right eye. After that, both eyes had changed by about half a diopter each and every year – just enough that she needed new glasses, but without ever being desperate for them. They had changed a little more during her first year at university with all the extra bookwork, and she felt that she could use new glasses now, although what she had was fine for the moment. She even told me how nervous she always was when people saw her in glasses – or even a new pair of glasses – for the first time. And that included me, when we had first started sharing a room together. After about five minutes of wearing her spare pair, I took them off and gave them back. The right lens was just too strong. Chloë kindly suggested that we buy an eye patch once we reached Koblenz, so that I could see through the left eye only. “What’s the German for ‘joke shop’?” she asked. “Very funny. I suppose you’ll be wanting to buy me a parrot and a pair of crutches as well?” “Ooh arr!” We left our rucksacks in the lockers at Koblenz station. We were never going to be able to justice to the city in four hours, but as our twofold aim was to get something to eat and visit the Landeseck, it ought to have been enough. The weather had slowly been improving as the day wore on. The wind had dropped and the sun was beginning to come out. We bought a couple of sandwiches and a drink each on the way to the Landeseck, and spent a very pleasant hour or so, eating and drinking, and watching the World go by. This left us a couple of hours to do a little bit of exploring before we had to go back to the station, and it wasn’t long until we were browsing some of the shops in the Hochstrasse. It was while we were walking casually along that I spotted a charity shop, which gave me an idea. The lady inside was not overly impressed when we started rummaging through the box of old glasses just inside the front door, but when I showed her what was left of my own pair, she suddenly became a lot more friendly and helpful. She took us, and the box of glasses through to the back of the shop, where she indicated a table we could use to help us sort through the contents. There were somewhere between seventy and eighty pairs of glasses in the box. We spent the best part of half an hour looking through and sorting out – and, of course, trying on. There were one or two pairs which were too broken to be of use to anyone, and over half of the pairs seemed to be for longsighted people who needed bifocals. Nevertheless, we reduced the choice down to just four pairs that I could actually wear. The first was a purple plastic pair in a fairly modern style. They fitted me very well, and suited me, too. The downside was that the lenses were weaker than my own glasses had been, so they weren’t really much use. The second pair was a black plastic pair, where the lenses seemed pretty much perfect. This time, the drawback was their size. They looked enormous on my face, and were rather loose as well. There was a danger they would fall off if I made a sudden movement, or had to run for a train. The third pair was a 1980s style pair of drop-temple glasses. The fit was fine and the lenses were close enough to my own prescription to be wearable – except that the style was so totally out-of-date that Chloë just burst out laughing when she saw them on me. The final pair was a gold-coloured round metal pair. The lenses were a bit stronger than I needed, although nowhere near as strong as Chloë’s spare pair, and they went reasonably well with my face shape and colouring. We could have visited numerous other charity shops in search of a better pair and still not found anything. We returned the box of glasses to the lady, and gave her a ten euro contribution for the charity, and meandered slowly back to the station. It didn’t take long for me to grow accustomed to the lenses. They were fine for reading the departures board at the station, and also for checking our timetable book, although I did feel that I could see slightly better if I leaned back and lifted my head slightly. Still, it was good not to be the one having to go right up to the screens to read the all-important train information, and by the time we arrived in Munich the following morning, I had almost forgotten about our little shopping trip the previous day. Munich was, again, a fascinating city to visit – and all the more so as I was able to see things so much more clearly than I had in any of the other places we had been to. We made sure that we were at the Neues Rathaus to see the clock strike eleven, with the little figurines doing their dance. We went for a wander through the Englischer Garten, although it was hard to see anything special in it, as it was just like any park back home. And, of course, no visit to Munich would be complete without a visit to the Hofbräuhaus – and we took full advantage of the beer, the food, the music and the atmosphere – and all in the guise of historical research, of course! We only spent a couple of nights in Munich, although we could happily have spent longer. We had told Chloë’s uncle and aunt the date we would be arriving, although we still had to let them know the time of our train, so that they could meet us at the station. The temptation was to spend most of the day in the city and catch a late afternoon train to Vienna. However, by this point, we were both pretty tired – and possibly a little hungover after a second evening in the Hofbräuhaus, so we decided to break our journey in the little town of Prien am Chiemsee, and spent a relaxing afternoon enjoying a boat trip on the lake. I’d like to say my glasses ensured this was a truly magical experience, but when your eyelids keep shutting, it makes no difference at all how well you can normally see. We did force ourselves to get off at the Fraueninsel for a look around, and after that, it was a bit easier to stay awake. It was great to reach Vienna later that evening. I was able to sit back and relax as Peter and Doris drove us to their house in the Donaustadt part of the city. Peter was Chloë’s uncle; his wife had been born and brought up in Vienna, and they had met while she was studying English some thirty years earlier. They had a son, David, who was a few years older than us. I didn’t get to meet him, as he worked for a company based in Chicago, and only came back to Austria once or twice a year. As well as having a hot meal ready for us within half an hour of our arrival, Doris had us unpacking all of our dirty laundry so that she could wash it and get it dried for the second half of our journey. And after dinner, I was able to enjoy a very pleasant soak in the bath, before settling down for a good night’s sleep in a proper bed. The next day proved to be a very lazy one. I didn’t wake up until ten o’clock, and it was another half an hour or so until Chloë emerged from her room. Peter had gone to work, so we spent the rest of the morning chatting and generally being sociable with Doris. As a native Viennese, Doris was keen to show us her home town, and was busy telling us about where she planned to take us the next day. I found it very hard to keep up with the names of all the buildings, as I knew very little about Vienna, apart from the fact that it was the capital of Austria, and that the river Danube flowed through the city. When Peter arrived home, we started discussing plans for the evening. Doris was also insistent that they to take us to a Heurigen – an Austrian wine tavern – as she felt that this was something that every visitor to Vienna ought to do. I was a little surprised when we set off on foot, and even more so when I found myself being shepherded onto a tram, but apparently this was all part of the experience. It meant that both Peter and Doris were also able to drink, without having to worry about driving home afterwards. I didn’t know what to expect, but what followed was a magical evening of wine, good food, music and laughter – the sort of evening where you imagine how wonderful it would be to do it all again the following evening, but never do, for fear that it might not be quite as good. I was also not seeing too clearly by the end of the evening; nothing to do with the glasses on my face, but everything to do with the number of glasses of wine inside me. I blame Doris. She had wanted us to try every type of wine they had. If I had felt guilty about getting up late the day before, it was almost eleven o’clock by the time I managed to haul myself out of bed. I took the opportunity to give my hair a good wash in the shower, and by the time I had got out, I could hear sounds that indicated that others were beginning to stir. Over breakfast, Chloë and I sorted out our plans for the next few days. We opted for a bus tour of Vienna as our afternoon’s entertainment, as Doris had said she would be preparing us Wiener Schnitzel for dinner that evening, and then agreed to be allowed to be shown some other parts of the city the following day. We were in two minds on what to do on our final day there – whether to exhaust ourselves so that we slept on the night train to Rome, or to take it easy so that we might have some energy left in case we didn’t. In the end, we spent the morning at the Schönbrunnerbad, an open-air swimming pool on the other side of the city, before a late lunch / early dinner and off to the station for the 19.23 night train to Rome. The sun was shining brightly when we reached the eternal city, and the place was absolutely packed. We were very glad that we had taken the opportunity to book our accommodation in advance, even if we were going to be two girls in a room for four people in a hostel near the edge of the city. We knew, also, that those other two beds were likely to be occupied, and just hoped that we would get on well with whoever we ended up sharing with. We had found our way to the Piazza Barberini, and were enjoying the sunshine by the Triton Fountain, when the right lens of my glasses popped out. I managed to catch it before it fell in the water, but where the screw which had been holding it in had gone to was anybody’s guess. And so, for the second time in just over a week, I was unable to see clearly. I didn’t fancy looking through another load of glasses in a charity shop, and the lens was still intact, so we found an optician’s and went in to see whether they could help. My Italian is limited to words like “pizza” and different types of pasta, so the conversation was quite hard to follow. The screw was not a problem, but the lady who was fixing my glasses spotted a crack in the frame, and pointed out the chances that it would break with a lot of wild gesticulations. At least, I think that is what she was saying, but I could certainly see the crack when she pointed at it. She showed us a rack of new frames – all at 59 euros, and took my glasses away for some reason. When she came back, she pointed at a smaller figure of 99 euros and pointed at the frames and my old lenses, saying “we make new.” There were plenty of different colours and styles available in the 59 euro range but, to save time, I chose a frame which was not dissimilar to the one which had suffered the ill-effects of the German train. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “You come back tomorrow morning for new glasses,” as I parted with my last 100 euro note, to be given a single coin in return. She was as good as her word, and when we arrived just before midday, she greeted us like long-lost friends. By the time she had finished, the glasses were a perfect fit. “You see well?” she asked, in her best English. “Si,” I answered in my best Italian. “Grazie.” For the second time since leaving home, I felt like I was getting used to a new pair of glasses. I just hoped that these things did not come in threes, as I had just spent all of the money I had earmarked for seeing Rome merely on seeing. We had several full-on days in Rome. The Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Trevi Fountain… We saw them all. It was a relief to be able to get back to the hostel every evening and just relax. The two girls we were sharing with, Johanna and Agnetha, were from Göteborg, in Sweden. They were doing much the same as us, but were planning on visiting Verona and Venice before travelling northwards through Germany on their way home. Verona was tempting, but a couple of days on the beach in the south of France was even more so, as I think all four of us were finding the heat a bit of a struggle. They did suggest that a trip to Geneva, although quite expensive, might be worth our while. Our journey northwards to Nice was our last overnight trip, and I cannot say I was too disappointed by that. It wasn’t the most comfortable journey, and it didn’t help that the air-conditioning didn’t seem to be particularly effective in our compartment. Moreover, we didn’t really want to go to Nice itself, and jumped on the first train to Monte Carlo – just to say that we’d been. If Rome had been expensive, Monte Carlo was twice the price, and we ended up grabbing some food and a drink from a corner shop, just to keep the price down. We ended up staying for a few days in Juan-les-Pins. If I’m honest, it was still too hot, but it was great to be able to relax a bit, and go for a stroll along the promenade, without feeling any need to go anywhere in particular, or do anything specific. The sea was remarkably clear, and if we weren’t in it, we were either sunbathing or just wandering. It was still quite crowded and expensive, but simply walking and watching costs nothing, and the views from the Sentier du Littoral were superb. And then there were the private yachts moored in the marina and just offshore… Both Chloë and I dreamed of meeting one of the multi-millionaires who owned them, and being invited for a ride on their luxury yacht, but sadly, it didn’t happen. Our journey to Arles saw us having to change trains in Avignon, so it seemed silly not to get off the train to stretch our legs and wander down to the river to see the remains of the famous Pont d’Avignon. Without the sea breeze, it felt almost hotter than Rome, so we found a suitable café overlooking the river, where we were able to stop and enjoy a couple of cold beers and a sandwich, served in a typical French baguette. By this time, both Chloë and I were tired of travelling, and both of us wanted to get home for some proper rest. We visited the Roman Amphitheatre in Arles, and did the trip to see the remains of the old Roman aqueduct, but it was clear that we were both exhausted. The travelling was bad enough, but it was the heat which was really taking its toll. We managed to stop off at the Pont du Gard on our way towards Paris, but it would have been much easier to get there if we had had a car. By the time we reached Paris, we only had enough energy left to enjoy a sightseeing tour of the city by bus. We only got off it a couple of times for some photo stops. Paris felt close enough to home to be somewhere we could easily get back to in the future, so we didn’t feel we were losing out when we cut our trip short by a couple of days. When I was home, I managed to find a job covering for people on holiday at the local supermarket. It wasn’t the most exciting way of earning money, but it helped to pay off a few of the extra beers and things we had had while travelling around Europe, and gave me a couple of hundred pounds towards the next term’s bills. It was only when I had been home a week that I realised I was still wearing my glasses all the time. Nobody had said a word about them, so I tried to go back to wearing them part-time. It only took me an hour or so to get fed up of not being able to see things clearly, so I put them back on and kept them on. It was great to see Chloë again when the new term started. We had kept in contact over the Summer, and she looked really well. She seemed to have lost a few pounds since we had returned from Europe, and had got new glasses as well. Apparently, I had been pointing things out to her in Juan-les-Pins and Arles that she hadn’t been able to see for herself. She was also surprised that I was still wearing the glasses I had bought in Rome, but they felt like they were the right prescription, so I didn’t feel any great need to get them changed. In fact, I lasted until Easter the following year until I decided I ought to get my eyes checked once again. I had been avoiding the back rows of lecture theatres for a couple of months, and hoped that my parents would give me a contribution towards new glasses if I got them while I was still a student. As I set off to the optician’s, my Mum handed me five £20 notes to help with the cost of new frames. I was a little nervous as I entered, as I knew that it was quite a while since they had last seen me, and that the glasses I was wearing were not the ones I had been prescribed some 21 months earlier. I had my story worked out, and it was all true. I had been travelling around Europe when my glasses had been broken in a rather unfortunate accident. I had got these glasses in Rome, where they hadn’t told me what my prescription was – and I didn’t speak Italian. The optician listened to my story, and then asked to borrow my glasses, which she took out of the room with her. “Were you happy with these glasses when you got them?” she asked, on her return. “They took bit of getting used to, as with all new glasses, but after a couple of days, they were fine.” “It’s just that they’re quite a lot stronger than your previous prescription from us and… Well, let’s see.” After asking me what I could read without my glasses, she asked me to put them back on, and read the chart with them. I managed most of the penultimate line, but could not see anything but dots at the bottom. After a few changes of lens, I could read those, too. Then, she handed me a chart to read. The big print down the bottom was easy, but I was having to work hard to read the top parts comfortably. She inserted a couple of lenses. “How’s that?” she asked. It helped a lot. “And can you read more clearly with these lenses?” She held a couple of lenses in what looked like a metal stick in front of my eyes. The top section was easy to read, so I rattled it back to her. She changed the lenses and repeated the process, but this time, there was no miracle improvement, so she took the frames off, and pulled another machine across in front of me, and started to examine the backs of my eyes. Once she had finished that, she turned back to her notes. It seemed like an age, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before she turned back to me. “As I said earlier, the glasses you got in Rome were quite a lot stronger than the previous pair you got from us, and there has been another small change in your distance prescription, although your close vision doesn’t seem to have changed much at all. Do come through and have a look at the frames for your new glasses. Are you happy to get a new pair of varifocals, or would you prefer bifocals?” I was flabbergasted. Varifocals? Bifocals? I was struggling to pretend that I didn’t know already. “How much has my prescription changed?” “The glasses you are wearing are a -3.00 in the right eye and -3.25 in the left eye, with a +1.25 add. Your new prescription is for -3.50 and -3.75, with a +1.50 add. We don’t see many people your age with that sort of near vision issue, but with all of the studying you do, it actually makes good sense to give you a little extra help with reading.” As I started to try on frames, I reflected on the fact that no-one would know I was wearing varifocals. After all, I’d already had them for nine months, and I hadn’t known. Unless anyone else asked me, they would be none the wiser. It was my nine-month secret.