Jonny McCambridge: Wallet, phone, keys … and now glasses

They are my wallet, mobile phone and keys. Combined, it is not an exaggeration to state that they control much of my participation in society.

The wallet, and the multitude of cards contained within it, enable and facilitate all commercial transactions (as well as being a store for countless scraps of paper with messages, thoughts and supposedly important information scratched on them).

The phone is the gateway to the vast majority of my communication with the outside world, as well as providing the channel through which I discover and learn almost everything about what is happening in that world. Most sport I watch, music I listen to, and news I read, is now consumed through my phone. Eventually, the mobile may even replace the wallet as the tool for making payments. Often this column is written on my phone.

The keys, while less versatile, are central to my movement to and from my home, at work and in my car. I presume there will come a point in the future when I can use my phone to open my front door and start the car, but I’m not there yet.

It is an absolute indisputable fact to state that, for the attainment of any sense of peace in my existence, I need to know where my wallet, phone and keys are during every single second of every day.

To lose or misplace any of these objects, even temporarily, leads to a personality transformation where I stomp about aimlessly in a panic, fretting and muttering under my breath, utterly unable to rid my mind of worry until the lump of leather, plastic or metal is retrieved.

I marvel at the insouciance of my wife when she loses things, and her trust and faith that they will simply “turn up again” without her needing to expend masses of negative energy searching. She becomes more worried when I lose items, because she knows what my reaction will be.

Wallet, phone, keys. These are among the first thoughts to enter my head when I wake in the morning, and also the last before I retire in the evening. Indeed, the very prospect of being able to sleep without having an exact knowledge of their location would be fanciful.

It is just a little easier when I am at home. My wallet and keys have a designated location where they must be stored at all times. Even though I know exactly where they are, that doesn’t preclude me from strolling past every half hour or so to confirm they have not been moved or swiped by some unknown intruder. Similarly, after I use my keys to lock the front door, I may check that it really is locked on another half dozen occasions before I can finally settle and go to bed.

The phone is slightly more complicated in that it moves around with me from room to room. It is almost always at my side, as if it were some artificial extension of a limb. This constant motion raises substantially the possibility of it going missing. When it occasionally does, I use the landline phone to call my mobile and then roam from room to room listening for the vibration and cursing myself for leaving it on silent.

Departing the house is when I become even more nervy about the possessions. There is an order which has to be followed. The wallet must be in my right trouser pocket, the keys in my left trouser pocket and the phone in my left jacket pocket. It has always been that way.

Even with this carefully considered ritual, I find I am constantly checking their presence, worrying that they have fallen out. It is my habit to go around tapping my pockets every few minutes, mumbling over and over as I walk down the street, ‘wallet, phone, keys … wallet, phone, keys’.

Like much of what I write on this page, I am not sure how it will appear to the reader, to those who do not have to live with what goes on in my head. Perhaps it seems overly obsessive, verging on some type of personality disorder. Maybe some regard it as deeply unreasonable or even unpleasant behaviour. But perhaps there is just a little grain of it which might seem familiar to some, the sense of being trapped by our possessions. I really don’t know.

What I do know is that it can be mentally exhausting, continually tracking objects which take on more importance than they really should. Sometimes I watch my son and envy his youthful sense of freedom, not yet weighed down by any responsibility.

And the predicament has deepened. Now there is a fourth object. Wallet, phone, keys, has now become wallet, phone, keys and glasses.

Recently on this page I wrote about my slowly diminishing eyesight and the inevitability of needing spectacles. Now, they have arrived.

The glasses are required for reading and working at my computer. For other activities I don’t require them.

And therein lies the conundrum. If my eyesight was poor enough to require magnification all of the time it would not be such a problem, I could just wear the glasses constantly. As it is, when I wear them and look up from my book or screen to view something in the distance, the world appears blurry.

But reading is such an integral task that it presents itself at various times in multiple locations. I need the glasses to decipher the instructions on microwaveable meals, to make out the prices of items in shops and to see text messages on my phone more clearly.

I started off by determining that the kitchen table would be the location where my glasses could sit when I wasn’t wearing them. Within minutes I found myself in the bathroom struggling to differentiate between tubes of toothpaste and cracked heel repair cream.

This led to the sad realisation that the glasses are going to have to be with me, even when I’m not wearing them.

I unsuccessfully explored some options which might have made this transition more straightforward. My wife baulked at the idea when I suggested wearing the glasses on a chain around my neck, and the man in the opticians just looked bemused when I asked him what range of monocles they had in store.

As it is, I’m left with the uncomfortable option that the pair of glasses is now just one more thing that I need to have in my possession at all times but am surely destined to lose.

As a final thought, this is the first column I have written while wearing my new glasses. I can now see more clearly what it is I am typing. I am not sure it has improved the end result.