… Lorraine has gone.

About twenty years or so ago, I started wearing spectacles… for reading.

Over the years, though, my eyes got worse and about ten years ago I became a full-time Speccy-Four-Eyes .

I bought my first pair of glasses from a well known high street opticians – who I won’t name here, but it ryhmes with Pec Shavers – and I have been going there ever since.

The last couple of times though, I didn’t feel I got the level of service that I should be getting.  And I always felt like I was on a conveyor, being passed from assistant to assistant to optician to assistant with lots of waiting on hard plastic chairs in between, but always, ultimately, with a rush to get me sorted and out of the store as quickly as possible..

I mentioned this to a mate of mine and he said he’d had the same experience and so had changed to a small independent optician. He highly recommended them, so I thought I would give them a go.

A couple of weeks ago, I phoned and made an appointment. The lady at the other end was super polite and helpful and she gave me instructions on where best to park.

On the day, I parked up in the supermarket car park as instructed, with plenty of time before my appointment and started the six-minute walk that Google Maps was displaying on my phone. After a couple of minutes, I realised the map on the phone wasn’t changing – it did this once before, I think the GPS has gone faulty – so I gave up with it and put it away. I wandered up and down the high street but – try as I might – I couldn’t find the opticians.

The irony of that wasn’t lost on me.

I asked several people for directions, but no-one could help.  My appointment was now overdue and so I phoned the opticians and the super nice lady gave me directions.  A few minutes later, I arrived to find them smiling and waving to me out of the window. A very friendly bunch.

Once inside, a few  details were taken then the optician took me through to a room at the back.

She checked my eyes with the usual “Is it better with this… or this?  This… or this?”. She photographed my retina and checked my peripheral vision and all the time we chatted about this and that. All very pleasant and relaxed.

Afterwards, I sat down with the owner and we discussed several different options for my glasses. Again, we chatted and laughed as we tried different frames and at no point was there any sense of a rush  – they seemed to have all the time in the world for me.

Yes, it was more expensive – but only slightly – and it was such a different (better) experience to what I’d had before, that I think it was well worth paying that little extra.

In fact, I’m actually looking forward to my next visit.