Help! Police!

I bought some new glasses in December. I've been severely short-sighted for years, but it seems I'm now developing some slight astigmatism in my left eye as well. Fantastic.

I admit I didn't buy the cheapest frames in the shop (the shop in question being one of those lengthy opticians' chains). I bought some which cost a little more than that, but which weren't, by these opticians' standards, notably expensive ones. (They were on special offer, of course). I thought it was time for a change from the round glasses I'm used to, so I went for narrower, squarer lenses. I chose to get them in black, because that particular design, when metal-rimmed, inevitably make one look like a Gestapo officer. (Why do Gestapo officers in films wear glasses? Why do so many of them walk with a limp? That doesn't seem terribly ubermensch-isch to me, but maybe I'm not getting the whole picture.)

Anyway. When I got the glasses home, I saw that the case the opticians had given me for them had the word "POLICE" on it. Odd, I thought. Seems a peculiar name for a spectacle frame manufacturer. On the other hand I always thought it was a strange name for a band, and that didn't stop Sting et al. So I thought no more of it.

When I saw my brother over Christmas, he congratulated me (ironically, because that's the sort of brother he is) on having Police glasses.

"What?" I asked him. "Eh?"

He explained that "Police" are an agonisingly trendy designer of fashionable spectacles, and that their frames are worn by international footballer and minor Hindu deity David Beckham.

"Christ," I opined.

I hadn't imagined that Mr Beckham and I had anything in common at all, beyond the human genome and a limited percentage of the English language. How wrong I was. It does seem that the two of us now share an eyeware-related fashion statement. This was brought home to me last Friday at work, when a PE teacher -- a PE teacher! -- congratulated me on the trendiness of the aforementioned spectacles.

I have enough difficulty as it is relating to the PE teachers at St Brad's, since the experiences of my own school years make me profoundly sceptical that anyone could possibly do the job effectively without being an ignorant sadist with a love of power and an unreasoning hatred of... er, pretty much everything else. I do try to be tolerant, though.

But honestly, if they're going to start congratulating me on my entirely accidental choice of spectacles, I can't be held responsible for my actions.