Heart & Soul

“It was the perfect Provencal day. Beautiful blue sky, strong sunshine and a hint of ozone on the breeze. As I walked round the tiny harbour I was at peace with the world. Checking out the menu in a tiny bistro, I caught sight of my refelection and smiled. What is it aboout France that makes everyone look cool - even an English exchange student from Home Counties North, on her very first trip abroad. Perhaps it was my sunglasses. And then I saw him. Tanned, barefoot, handsome. As I pushed my hair away from my face to get a better look, my hand caught my sunglasses, which flew up in the air and into the harbour. All afternoon he helped me search in the sea. I never did find my sunglasses. But I did catch something that afternoon...my lovely young husband.”

“My most abiding childhood memory & maybe greatest lesson in life are both down to a special pair of my grandfather's old reading glasses that, when stealthily perched at bizarre & acute angles on his face, could dispel the hurt of a grazed knee under close examination or quickly topple long winded conversations between adults into fits of hilarity. It's now turned into something of a time honored tradition between the bespectacled in our family, reminding others about how a little change of perspective can quickly make molehills out of mountains.”

“The memory that stands out for me is my father putting on his glasses to hide his emotional reaction. He was always very strong for his family and never wanted us to see him as any less. He loved his glasses and as a child I was the only one allowed to touch them. He always laughed when I would take them off his face and put them on myself. He died very young and I treasure the memory of us bonding over his favorite sun glasses. When I lose my eyes and remember my heart expands with love, both the love I have for him and the love I felt from him. Unfortunately the glasses were lost after his passing. I wasn't able to find them.”

“Having a wretchedly strong prescription, my earliest experiences of eyewear were rather gloomy. Bottle-thick lenses earned me the teenage nickname ‘Olive’ (of On the Buses fame). Glasses and I shared a bitter relationship until the miraculous teenage discovery of contact lenses. For ten years I did not wear glasses again. Recently, I started to feel drawn to them and the matchless improvement a good pair of glasses can make to the plainest of faces. Now I wear glasses again. The most theatrical, horn-rimmed pairs I can find, but for the sake of pure vanity- whilst still wearing my contact lenses underneath fake lenses.”

“Black wayfarers. The sunglasses my mother use to wear, even though they were far to large for her head and always slipped off her nose. The sight of them immediately transports me back to the summer of 1991, when I was aged 7. During that summer my father spent a lot of time away with work, so I spent a great deal of time alone in my mothers company. To keep me entertained, my mother always used to take me out in her car, whether it was down to the shops or the super market. But when my mother wore her sunglasses, I knew instantly that we were about to embark on a road trip to somewhere exciting like the seaside. The soundtrack to these trips was always, always, Graceland, by Paul Simon.”

“My journey with sunglasses started aged 8 years of age. when in the south of France on a family holiday i remember my dad slipping and dropping his sunglasses over a cliff on to an isolated tiny beach. he waited 3 hours for the tide to go out so he could retrieve them. at that point i realised these things you wore on your face with dark lenses were something special.”