TOT: Mam Tor

I am really bad at going downhill - far, far slower than anyone else. I thought that maybe I could up the ante, and I promptly fell backwards off the side of the path - fortunately landing in a big clump of ferny stuff. I think it's a combination of poor balance and wearing varifocals, which require me to hold my head right down on steep descents. I'm fine going uphill though.

They're a bit young to be parents, even for Barnsley.

Owain

I like it

We have the same thing but on a voluntary basis..

And normally there would be no parents. It's just this time we decided not to sent 7 and 8 year olds off into the woods at midnight on their own.

Just to go OT slightly, what was it like the first time you wore varifocals?

I get my first pair sometime this week and have been warned to be careful, especially as I am often on cherry pickers, ladders etc.

Cheers

You have to bend your head so you are looking straight down, so you see your feet through the distance part of the lens. Otherwise, if you see them through the reading part, they a) are out of focus, which may not matter much, and b) appear displaced from their true position compared to what you are seeing through the rest of the lens. b) can kill you!

I find that looking sharply downward to see my feet through the distance part of the lens throws my balance right out. That can kill you, too. :)

Heck, they are all out to get me, but opticians are the most deadly.

I tried em for a fortnight, kept tripping up on roofs, took em back.

Bill

And conversely if you want to do close work on something above your head you need to bend your head painfully far back to look through the reading bit.

Anyhow, please resist the temptation to work by touch, especially if an apprentice is anywhere near ;)

I was told I could have another pair for just distant that I could use for work. I can still read quite well on close up stuff.

And I did get told off for not having my eyes tested for 10 years.

Best keep my old specs for a while for those special jobs until I get used to the new ones?

You get to claim two lots of child benefit!

Tried varifocals (reading and distance) and found them too dangerous. I though it would be useful to be able to read a map and look at the road without changing glasses, found I would trust them to walk across the road, the peripheral vision was all over the place. A few years later I was persuaded to try 'occupational lenses' ? varifocals for reading and screen work? they have worked out ok, once I adjusted to the odly trapezoid screen.

Ask the dispensing optician to grind the lenses upside down with the reading part at the top and adjust the lens for viewing angle accordingly (pantoscopic/retroscopic tilt)

Owain

Back in the good old days when cigarette manufacturers and not coca cola and McDonald sponsored sport.

Is that the Mam Tor that, according to Abandoned Engineering - cuts off the road from Castleton to Sheffield? ;)

Yes.

Bill

I've been wearing varifocals for nearly 30 years. My first pair were a disaster until I found that the optician had made them wrongly with the optical centres for each eye were at different levels. They went back, I had another pair where the optical centres were too low and I had to tilt my head back when driving. Again they went back. When I bought my current pair, the optician offered me 4 different grades (at 4 different prices). The differences were in peripheral vision. I bought the most expensive.

I trialled some and hated them. I found I'd rather have flat and uniform vision even if it's "wrong" for some depth of field.

For Adam. Don't wear them on the day of receiving them. Put them on the next morning, your perception will be less stressed.