Roy Colbert discusses the difficult art of aging gracefully.
Dwindling eyesight has meant one of the prime pleasures in life - reading - has become intolerably difficult.
Books were an early casualty.
Review books arriving in the red letter box were treated with the same recoil reserved for electricity bills.
I could have told the book editors at Metro and the Sunday Star-Times that I only wanted thin books with big print.
But editors like to believe their reviewers are humans of higher intellect than that.
So I just said no more books.
Newspapers and magazines are no easier, but unfortunately the print media is a prime Cancerian ritual.
Hence the search - for me, more a stumbling grope - went out late last year for optical aid.
A better man would have sought professional advice from the Hospital Eye Department, where I am a frequent flyer, or the optometrist.
But I have never been a better man.
So I went straight to the Two Dollar Shop, where cheap reading glasses and magnifiers tumble from every shelf.
However the strongest reading glasses sold at the Two Dollar Shop for $3.50 only had 4x magnification.
Nearly enough, but not enough.
The magnifying glass was no better, and this also took one hand out of play.
When holding a newspaper with one hand, I need to have food or drink in the other.
I calculated the magnifying glass - also dangerously carpel-tunnel heavy - would remove two hours from my day, and you can appreciate that for a semi-retired man, every minute is sacrosanct.
The Blind Foundation website had small 7x and 10x magnifiers.
I raced out to the local branch in Hillside Rd, but there was no shop, just a friendly lady who gave me a form to join the foundation, membership of which gave me access to their products.
Ironically, the print on the form was too small to read.
Dick Smith sold me a Personal Magnifier with LED lighting which wound around the head like a coal-miner's helmet.
This one kept falling down over the mouth, making the entrance of toast impossible.
And while it had an additional high-magnification lens, it was over the right eye.
I am blind in the right eye.
The lighting, though, was good.
And lighting is crucial.
There was nowhere in our house where I could read, so we had a custom-made rack of halogen bulbs installed above the kitchen island.
Expensive and functional, like an MRI scanner.
But I like to read in the lounge, the bedroom and the bog.
I need movable light.
Lux flexibullux.
Spotlight had a Hands Free Magnifier With Lamp, which dangled on a cord from the neck like a plate.
The magnification was still not strong enough, and more crucially, when I had it hovering above the sports pages, I looked like an idiot.
I was forced to go global.
A German company called Eschenbach had some beautifully made headband magnifiers, and I nearly ordered the 9831SP when I saw the price.
My German is weak, but from memory, eschen is ashes, so Eschenbach's name must come from reducing your fiscal life to ashes so you have to live in a bach.
My best buy came on Trade Me, a Pocket LED Magnifier, the QM 3531.
No brand name, but most rational thinkers would agree this indicates high quality.
I ordered one immediately, but there was a three-day wait - death for the impulsive consumerist.
So I walked down the street to Jaycar and bought an identical one there, cheaper.
This meant technically I had paid less for the other one.
Or, as my wife says when staggering home with toys for the grandson in Chicago, the more you spend, the more you save.
I eventually sought the professional advice of hospital and optometrism, who told me what cataracts do to an already ailing eye.
I am content.
I can do without reading really, I have a damn good pair of ears.
Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
