I've worn contact lenses for 24 years and nobody believes I have them. Before that, I looked like this...



I've never had a bad day with them. They are wonderful. The worst thing about specs was the wear and tear on one's nose and ears, plus the constant sense that one was viewing the world peripherally.

The secret to wearing contacts successfully is to rinse them in beer. Innit, Marts?

Mort, that's for the virtuosi amongst us. Don't try it at home, kids.

Richard, I'm afraid contacts don't do anything specs can't. So if, like me, you're getting to have a problem with reading v. long distance v. short distance, bad luck. Right now my optician has me with one lens (R) for short, one (L) for long. It's not great. But at least you think you look like George Garnett Clooney.

I've worn glasses since I was a boy and have never been tempted by lenses - not least due to the fact that mornings are not my good time of day, are invariably rushed in the PW household and I'm not sure I'd want the fuss (having been bearded since I was a student I can't imagine how most men find time to faff around shaving in the morning).

Having now got to the time of life where varifocals are the order of the day, I don't know whether I'd have the option of contact lenses any more anyway.

I'm aware of that, it's just that I shall need some new hardware for my eyes fairly soon and I'd never thought of the contact lens solution (so to speak). A friend of mine told me the other day that he was getting bifocal contact lenses. I thought he was having a laugh but they seem indeed to exist.

They do exist Richard, and they work, but for some reason some young, sharp suited opticians regard them as a laughable idea.. I WON'T GO TO SPECSAVERS AGAIN!

Wink? I never did. . 'ang on. <sound of spectacles being polished> Ah, yes, now Mr Burrit, about the matter of thoze  ringks ...

I'm feeling quite depressed after watching Andrew Marr's Britain From Above about the past and future of East Anglia, my favourite part of England, This was the BBC2 programme following the main BBC1 one. Apparently millions more people are going to move there, and this will mean a huge increase in housing, threatening the large expanses of farmland that currently form the character of the area. The thought of a Britain as crowded as London is a nightmare. Whenever I go to Norfolk, or Suffolk, or indeed many other rural areas, I am hugely comforted by the amount of green space there is, even though little of it is truly wild. It may soon not be like that.

I know people have to live somewhere, but can't bear the idea of England as one big urban sprawl,

As another very satisfied long-term lens wearer who has astigmatism which they correct perfectly, I have to ask why they can't help in your case, hh, especially now that they can even make correcting soft lenses, which certainly do the biz for me? (Although I use those only for swimming and diving, or expeditions where my normal gas-permeables, with their need for fluids and a greater kerfuffle in the case of loss, are unsuitable.)

Buzzards and kites have a completely different flight, surely? The kite's forked tail enables its body to articulate, so even if you can't see the tail, the moment one stops hovering, it's far more agile in the sky, with faster turns and swerves: a wonderful sight.

A mate of mine from university who's a GP has been very stern with me for even considering laser surgery: definitely to be avoided, so far as he's concerned.