I bought some new glasses recently, at great expense. (For those of you with 20/20 vision, be happy; glasses are expensive.) I picked them up this morning and I was actually quite excited about it — I’ve felt that my current pair haven’t been quite “right” for a little while, and a recent eye test confirmed that yes, my right eye in particular seems to have changed a bit, and a new pair of glasses probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea. (They probably weren’t a terrible idea anyway, since my current pair are now several years old and, having been attached to my face for the majority of that time, are now also covered in that unpleasant but reassuringly familiar clink that builds up around the nosepiece of glasses that are worn on a daily basis.)

Anyway, I put on the new glasses to try them and they immediately felt a little odd. I was assured that it was largely to do with the fact that my eyes were adjusting to the new lenses, though; after all, if my right eye had changed a bit, it had probably been overcompensating somewhat for the lenses in my current pair. I was then encouraged to keep them on for the whole day in order to try and adjust, and discouraged from returning to my old pair.

Well, I tried. I kept the new pair on for most of the day, but when I reached mid-afternoon and found myself sporting a headache that I can only describe as “excruciating” — it was near migraine-like in its intensity, nausea-inducing tendencies and quantity of colourful flashing lights it was attracting in front of my vision — I came to the conclusion that no amount of “adjustment” was going to fix this; the glasses were simply not quite right.

This is a bit of a bummer, since it means I have to make another appointment with the opticians to attempt to get this sorted. I imagine it will probably result in another eye test, too, which will be a pain to schedule around work, and then, of course, I’ll end up having to wait for some new lenses, assuming they do need replacing. This isn’t the end of the world, since my current glasses are still perfectly acceptable, but I was looking forward to enjoying the improved clarity and magic blue light-reducing lenses of the new ones.

Sadly it seems that is not to be for now; it would seem unwise to try and just cope with a pair of glasses that make me feel slightly cross-eyed at best and make me want to throw up and fall over at worst. With any luck, I’ll be able to get them sorted out this week.

These things happen, of course, but I can’t deny being a little disappointed by all this. I’ve not had a bad experience with opticians in the years since I started wearing glasses, so it’s a shame to run into this issue. Now comes the test of whether Boots’ customer service is up to snuff or not… I guess we’ll find out on Monday!