boybear

Girlbear and I have been to East Finchley to collect my new glasses.. it must be getting on for three years since I had my eyes tested, and at that time I was offered a pair so complex, and hence so expensive, that I said I would think about it, and didn't.  A new optician too, or at least new to me as an optician; I previously only knew him as a good, and very inventive, player on the bouzouki. This may not be the best recommendation for his skills in optometry, but after all, it's more than we often know about the tradespeople we engage.

So far it seems to be going well; I have two pairs of spectacles, for less than half the price I was quoted three years ago, and the distance pair have a magnetic clip-on to convert them to sunglasses; the computer pair have a case with pictures of bicycles. And there is so much detail in the world – if you never let your glasses get six years old (or take LSD) you might not be aware how many different bits go to make up a tree. After lunch at the New Local Cafe we walk through Cherry Tree Wood and into Highgate Wood.

Even before the new glasses I had been admiring the white blossoming shrub in the back garden, and admiring its bravery in the face of the cold snap threatened for the weekend. It put me in mind of Du Fu's “Spring Thoughts”, which contains both the pathetic fallacy and its reverse, a sort of “how can these things just keep on budding as if the nation wasn't falling apart?” I'm sure there are more elegant translations, but my own is the only one I have to hand:

The nation fallen, valley and hill remain:

In spring, the cities rife with green again.

Moved by hard times, the flowers sprinkle tears;

Reluctantly parting birds awaken fears.

Three months pass ,the beacons never grow cold;

A letter from home is worth a heap of gold.

I scratch my head, my white hair grown so thin,

Too meagre, soon, to hold the lightest pin.