Jonny McCambridge: A search for the missing glasses turns into something of a spectacle

It is not immediately clear why. I’ve never really thought about the issue, but this is undeniably my usual phone habit. I have owned various mobiles over the past three decades and I am not sure I’ve ever had a conversation on any of them while seated. It just seems natural to be mobile when I’m using my mobile.

Whether I’m reclining on the sofa, sitting at my desk or lying in bed, I will get up and walk around while chatting on my phone. I get a lot of phone calls, so I complete plenty of steps.

On this occasion I am working at the desk in my tiny office. I wear glasses when staring at the computer screen to enable me to read the stupid things I write more clearly. The glasses are removed from my face as I rise and put the phone to my ear.

I am slightly hazy about what happens next. I know that at one moment I am walking with my phone in one hand and my glasses in the other. By the time the phone call is ended, I am no longer holding the glasses and I don’t quite know why.

Immediately, I have a stirring of unease within my stomach, a sense that the affairs of the world are not all as they should be. I begin to retrace my steps. During the conversation I travelled just a short distance between my office and the bedroom. I walk back and forwards over and over, gazing at all flat surfaces where it is possible I may have thoughtlessly deposited the spectacles.

I am mumbling to myself.

‘This is quite extraordinary … not like me at all … quite extraordinary.’

My wife is getting ready for work and the strange behaviour is upsetting her routine.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’ve lost my glasses and I’m looking for them.’

‘You have a spare pair. Why don’t you wear those?’

Undoubtedly this is a reasonable question. The truth is that I have multiple pairs of glasses. There are the bedroom glasses which remain perched just beside where I sleep, the kitchen glasses on top of the microwave, the car glasses in the glove compartment and the utility glasses which are in my laptop bag for when I am on location.

But it is none of those that are missing. I know they are all in the exact spot where they should be. My office glasses are supposed to remain beside my computer … and they are not there.

While it may not portray a particularly positive reflection of my character, I know that nothing will be well with me until the glasses are located. No work will be satisfactorily done, no food enjoyed, no leisure time spent until they are back in their place.

(Perhaps I should point out now, lest the reader thinks this is all meandering towards a lazy comic cliché, the glasses are not on my head. I checked.)

The search is intensified. To the evident annoyance of my wife, I begin to move, lift and displace objects. I notice the laundry basket. While unlikely, is it possible that the glasses have fallen in there?

I stick my arm into the container full of clothes and rummage around, as if I were conducting the draw for the FA Cup. Right at the bottom I locate a hard object. I let out a sigh of something close to pleasure as I realise it feels just like a pair of spectacles. I pull it out of the basket. It is a pair of glasses. A pair of my wife’s glasses.

Now, I widen the search. Inexplicably, I begin to look in rooms that I did not enter while on the phone, in defiance of the hard logic that my glasses cannot possibly be there.

I find a pair on the windowsill of the bathroom. They belong to my wife. I find a pair beside my son’s schoolbag in his room. They belong to my wife. Another pair is located down the side of a cushion in the living room sofa. Also, not mine.

I collect this haul of my wife’s glasses located in random locations, ascend the stairs, and present them to her. Perhaps I am expecting that I will be hailed as an adventuring hero who has recovered long-lost treasured items. As it is, the response is minimal.

‘Thanks honey, just leave them down there.’

I am half-fascinated and half-appalled by this approach. Not having any evident care for where objects are located, existing in a fluid universe where spectacles can be treated in such a speculative manner. Going from moment to moment just trusting that a pair of glasses will be close to hand when required and desired. It is the polar opposite of my rigid habit of having to know where all my possessions are at every moment. It sounds lovely, if a little too close to anarchy. I’m envious of that mindset.

All of this philosophical meandering is not taking me any closer to finding the lost glasses. I make another despairing search of my route. My attempts to call a family meeting are rebuffed. A suggestion to my wife that the situation might require keeping our son off school for the day receives a similar short response.

Ultimately, there is work to be done and I have to get on. I return grumpily to my office, sit down and locate the utility glasses in my laptop bag. Ostensibly, they are identical to the office glasses, but they are not the office glasses. They feel unnatural.

There are wheels on the swivel-chair I use for work. As I roll the chair closer to the desk, I can feel an obstruction below. I am not in the mood for further disruption, so I force the wheels forward with some force.

Too late I realise what is happening and hear the crunch of plastic splintering about my feet.