It's just as well they were in Lost&Found and you didn't actually have to look for them in the physical sense.

Although I'm so alarmingly myopic that my specs hardly ever go missing as they are rarely out of my sight, so to speak, the feeling of helplessness when I do lose them - usually a result of swiping them off the bedside table when I reach over to switch off the alarm clock, sending them burrowing into the clutter beneath - is quite unlike anything else.  It really is very tricky, when one can't see beyond the end of one's nose, to search effectively for the one object which will solve the problem.

I'm so pleased you found yours 

Ironically, I can't see the image you posted (but that's because of the restrictions on internet at work - I am wearing my glasses!)

For a few years, earlier in the decade, I spent a very hectic time commuting regularly between the Thames and the Tay, and often working in points in between. I was in Reading one day, shopping, when I suddenly realised my wallet was no longer in my pocket. Total panic: apart from the fact that I'd just taken a substantial wodge of cash out of the bank, it had all my cards and my rail ticket north for early the following morning. I retraced my steps to every establishment I'd visited, without success: I tried phoning the company who cover all my cards, but because I didn't have my membership number on me (it was still at home), they'd not deal with me, therefore lengthening the time before the cards could be stopped. I knew that I'd have to report it to the police, so I made my way to the Police Station and joined the queue.

"I've lost my wallet." "Sorry to hear that, sir. Where and when?" "West end of Broad St, about ten minutes ago." "Wait here, sir".

A minute later someone came out of the back office. "You might be a very lucky boy: we've had a wallet handed in in the past few minutes. It contains something unusual. What did you have in yours? " "Well, there's money in it." "But what kind of money, sir?" "Well, as well as English money, there's Scottish notes, oh, and some Bulgarian ones too. And rail tickets for Scotland tomorrow, and a diver's licence." "That'll be this one, then, sir, since your photo is on the licence: a young girl brought it in: she saw it drop from your jacket, but couldn't catch up with you. Strangely enough, the same thing had happened to her just the other week while she was clubbing, and hers was handed in here, too, so she knew exactly what you must be going through. Perhaps you'd just like to check everything's there and sign for it...."

I can't tell you how relieved I was: absolutely everything was there. The girl (late teens) had left her phone number for contact, and I gave her a call immediately: even though I offered a reward, she was just happy that it had all worked out well; had I not got it back, the next twenty-four hours would have been an absolute nightmare, with a week's work in Scotland to get to but my tickets and all my cards and cash gone.


Bless her. 

This reminds me of Brian Ferneyhough, perhaps not entirely unlike a C of E vicar himself : "And then there is the 'beeping' noise which your washing machine makes when the washing cycle has finished. This noise is slightly too long, and if you are sitting in a quiet room it can be terribly disturbing. I find that the only appropriate reaction to this 'too-long-ness' is to enfold the experience in laughter."

(Honest, not making that one up. It was in a lecture on temporality in music ...)

Ron's story reminds me of the time I left my mobile phone on a Tube train - got off and realised almost straight away that I'd left it on the seat, but I was too late to do anything about it. I was on my way to meet a friend for a drink, and phoned my mum from his phone to let her know what had happened, just in case she tried to phone me and panicked. She called back a couple of hours later to say that a couple who'd found my phone on the train had phoned her from it (they must have found the number in the recent calls list) and told her they would leave it at Victoria station lost property office for me, so I picked it up the next day.

I've lost my phone on other occasions and not got it back, but it always makes me happy to remember that one time when I did.

I've related elsewhere my story about my mobile being picked up by the guard on the train as soon as I got off at Exeter, and him ringing my Mum's number from it just as I walked into Mum's home.

So here is my story about my specs.

I fell asleep with my specs on in my hotel last November in Istanbul having just spent the previous night on a Romanian sleeper.

I woke in the morning, and could not see them.  While I am showering, Sancho looks for them, and tells A Good News he's found the specs B Bad News they were broken at the bridge.  We were due to leave by a night train for Konya that evening.

We go into an optician, and fortunately the optician's English, although far from fluent, was better than our Turkish.  In any case communication was effected by holding up broken specs and looking sad.  We gathered he could not mend the frames, but he offered for a reasonable price, to take out the lenses, cut them down to size and fit them in new frames in a couple of hours.

This the good young man did, and I am wearing the same specs even as I type.  The new ones are less flashy, but perfectly serviceable.  We got the train that evening and were off into the depth of Asia Minor.

Since when has any room with a washing machine in it been (a) quiet and (b) one where you'd be sitting? I suppose the answer would be subcutaneously hilarious.

Some of us live in teeny flats where the kitchen and its appliances are at one end of the living room.

Some of us also practically sold our grandmothers in order to purchase super-quiet washing machines which are conducive to sitting in peace (or listening to music) in such a flat while the fast spin cycle is on