The bigger picture

I’ve been losing things regularly since I came here – my watch, my phone charger, my one good pen – so the fact that my reading glasses were on my face one minute and gone the next is nothing unusual.  It makes life rather blurry and sometimes awkward, and definitely encourages me to look at the bigger picture.  But in every case of loss so far, bar the present one, there’s been the elation of a sighting.  So I’m hopeful.

But I’m wondering whether perhaps it’s time to stop holding things at arm’s length and just buy myself another pair.  A cheap pair of reading glasses is exactly the sort of thing I’m sure I can find here.  Indeed, I’ve never seen so many pharmacies selling all manner of accessories, including reading glasses.  Or, rather, I have, but only here in France.  It’s one of those things that clearly keeps the economy going.

And in my own unscientific way, I’m impressed by the economy: so many excellent little shops, all alive, kicking and holding onto their street corners.  And so many frivolous ‘boutiques’ that obviously do more than just survive.  And, much more importantly, so many proper bookshops.  I mean independent bookshops of the sort that have been dying out in England for years.  They pile the books long and low rather than high, and you feel as if you could find anything.

And I’ve even stumbled upon a greengrocer who bags up my fruit and veg for me.  Freed from the need to involve myself in that messy business of evaluating ripeness and wrestling unlikely shapes into unwilling bags, I’m finding the whole buying process a simple pleasure.  So I’m buying more, which can’t be bad – either for me or for the economy.