in the sunshine and in the shade

I was told recently that my blog has a somber tone to it, that it makes me seem like I am unhappy. I responded that it is not the case, that I am perfectly happy, and that it's just that it's hard not to sound cheesy. However, if that is the perception people have of my blog, I would like to remedy it, because sometimes people can be very happy, and because sometimes things work out.

I have an address book, and the image on the cover is of a 1950s housing estate, likely American, where the houses are all similar (though not identical), the gardens are all well kept and there are a few figures at the front chatting. It reminds me of a small part of a housing estate in Biggar where you go in and can go left or right and both ways are basically the same and mirror each other. On the back of the address book the image is exactly the same only mirrored, yet somehow it looks completely different. It's the same as looking in the mirror at your surroundings. When I was young my room had these big sliding door mirrors that concealed a wardrobe. I would sometimes sit and look in the mirrors and my room through those mirrors looked so different. And even though I knew that it was exactly the same with the same objects and the same colours, I wished I could step through the mirror into this idealised room where things were familiar yet somehow more desirable. It would seem the grass was always greener.

The point is that I've not done that for a long time. When I was ill I used to go and stay with my Mum at home and I would envy her and her house. I would envy it not in a jealous hateful way, just with such longing for home and to feel safe and as though everything was just so. It's a funny concept, that of 'home', where there is no greatly determined route to get there, it just happens and you don't even realise it has sometimes. You can work it out if you go on holiday and feel home when you get back, those rare times when you actually get to smell the aroma of your own house as normally you cant see the wood for the trees.

But now I have found home. I have found home and everything else is perfect. I have Stuart, husband, and I don't know if I have ever described that in my blog before for fear of being to soppy or making him feel odd. To be honest I can't describe Stuart and all he means to me without describing myself as we are the same. Stuart is the only person in the world who isn't at least part stranger to me. I refer to him as the other half of a two piece jigsaw puzzle, literally the friendship necklace you would get when you were young with two necklaces each containing pieces that fit together. I remember having one when I was young, I had "friends", she had "best". I haven't spoken to her in probably ten years and I don't think I ever really knew her. I gave Stuart half of a 2 pieces jigsaw necklace set on the morning of our wedding. I don't know how I ever got so lucky to find myself fall into a person like this.

I feel like I have a real family. Not just inasmuch as there are people who I am related to and they live close. A lot of people have family, a lot of people see their family everyday, but that does not make them close. Some people spend time with their family because they feel they have to, I don't feel this with mine. Now we are married Stuart and I have our family, the two of us, and two little beasts who are more human and more loyal than anyone out there cares to be. Recently I have been awoken to the true nature of friends and friendship and I have accepted it for what it is, which I am not going into just now. The key thing is that it has shown me for sure that blood is rope and water is the deadly fall onto rocks over the cliff.

What is more in terms of happiness I am succeeding where others are not. I don't like to brag. Stuart tells me off for not outwardly expressing pride in my achievements. I will succumb to cheese and do it. I got a first class honours at university. I won all the history prizes. I am getting given money to stay at university, they want me that much. I've been conscripted. I sit with the phd students. I am doing an Mres in history - in four years I should be Dr Findlay. I get called Janet. I'm earning. I pick up a cheque on Friday. All the students Allan has supervised for phd now have university teaching jobs. So will I.

Basically I am very happy. I have been unhappy in the past. I will be unhappy in the future. But for right now everything is perfect. Do you believe in Karma? It's dumb, right? I think so, but somehow it seems to be applicable. I was thinking of it yesterday as I trudged like 8 books up a hill with a pulled back muscle on the first day of semester 1. Eric and Robbie sang it to me:

Further on up the road someone's gonna hurt you like you hurt me. Further on up the road, baby, just you wait and see. You gotta reap just what you sow; that old saying is true. Just like you mistreat someone, someone's gonna mistreat you. You been laughing, pretty baby, someday you're gonna be crying. Further on up the road you'll find out I wasn't lying.

Sometimes it feels as though you catch a break. It's not the universe, it's not your friends or your family. It is you, being a good person, being a hard worker, putting in what you want out of it. Getting it. I really believe that. I know people who put in nothing but bad feelings and ill-intentions, and they get that back out. I'm not saying this is the case totally. I mean, there are things such as diseases, poor luck and bad timing which can hurt the good people and I'm not trying to diminish the unfairness of that. But, on the whole, you do reap what you sow, and some people sow shit.

Sometimes things are bad. Sometimes you hate the world and it seems to hate you back. Sometimes it's time to moan or whine or cry. Sometimes it seems as though the sun will never return. Then spring comes, and sometimes things work out.

post-wedding intertia

I couldn't even think of a title for this blog. I don't feel eloquent in the slightest today.

I feel so disjointed just now. But I am also so very happy. Maybe I am just having bother processing such joys that I feel as if its a free lunch and I don't trust it. I said previously I would spend my days doing little, lounging around reading, drinking tea and having baths. I have done this a little bit but to be honest it hasn't been the relaxing time I hoped for. When I have time with nothing I need to do I feel so restless. I feel bored, and tired and like I should have something to do, something I don't want to do. Maybe I'm just easing into it, I've not been used to having nothing to do for a while. When something I do have to do emerges I get myself all wound up about it, and it feels like an enormous burden. I am forgetting to do things when I only have one thing to do. I feel as though I can't bring myself to do things I normally enjoy. Nothing seems fun. I am not unhappy though, just tired I think, in a multitude of ways. When Stuart isn't here I feel like I am incomplete and like I am waiting on him to return. Cling film.

I'm so overwhelmed of late that now the excitement of things has been diminished. Like spending our wedding gift vouchers and unpacking the stuff at home is a chore compared to weddings and honeymoon and time constraints and stressful travel arrangements. I am a little worried that I'm not going to be able to cope with university again. I think I will be okay though and I will probably get back into the way of it soon.

It feels like university is so close now and I have to have all the other things in my life in complete order come October because by then I wont be able to schedule anything except work. But actually doing these things is wearing me out so much. I am listless.

It's a quandry, whether to fight through and get things done before university or to try and recouperate before the enslaught.

Also I am so fed up of all the wedding paraphenalia that edorns our abode currently. Tartan ribbons everywhere. Things I don't need, all in piles of 60s. I had everything in order before, with no space to spare. And the gift list presents arrive on Wednesday. I had a big pile of bags for the wedding on the sofa in the study for weeks. Then for one day it was empty (27th). Then it got covered in presents and wedding stuff brought home. I went through presents today but still stuff and boxes linger. I have loads of things I meant to ebay ages ago clogging up space too.

I think I am going to go and read, drink tea and listen to some music with the cats; possibly stuart, possibly not.

What about a title though?

yes, it sure has been a long, hard drive

I am Helen and I am a post-graduate student.

Ah, and what's your last name Helen?

Maddock. NO! wait! It's Findlay.

And there you have it. Married off. Someone's wife. That's me. Married with kittens at the age of almost 23.

A lot has been happening in the last few weeks and I wish I had been able to blog it properly, to take the time to note these remarkable occurences, as they truely are that. I have loved the last few weeks more than anything, and I have learnt the true meaning of adoration, celebrity and indeed exhaustion.

I have a few things to note today, so I can have them safe in words and not swimming in my head. I don't trust myself to remember all of this well. I do not intent to go into minute detail of the wedding, not just yet. I'm still drinking it all up and I really need to devote some time to lay it down properly when I am not feeling quite so bothersome (I have the cold).

The wedding was the most odd thing. I had imagined it for so long and when it came nothing was as I had imagined. I don't mean this like things went wrong or different to as planned. To explain, it is like when you are going to meet someone and you are told about them, for example, they are very outgoing and fun. And you make a wee image in your head of what they look like and imagine the scenario when you meet them, where you will be standing. And even if you know the location or even a photo of the individual, when you finally meet them they look different to your mind, you will be facing a different way, sitting on a different seat, not sitting at all. They will still be the same person, they will still be has described, you will still be in the same venue but it will be different. Obviously, nothing is ever exactly as imagined. This struck me on the day of the wedding. And it was in no way bad, not at all.

Another thing that happened when I got married which I did not anticipate was the nerves. Stuart got them too. Of all the people in the world, all the couples, we are the least likely to be in any way worried about getting married. And it was not worries of getting married but that it would all go right. I think it was just the scale of the event. I was fine all morning, setting up, getting hair and makeup done. My mum was jittery to the max, you could see it all over her the poor dear. I think we were playing off of eachother because once she has laced up my dress, which she was worried about, and had started taking some pictures, she started to calm down and I started to feel a little scared. It hit once we got out the hotel room and took the lift down but I didn't really notice it. When it stopped feeling like butterflies and started feeling like my insides were imploding was when the car door was shut on me and my dad. Suddenly it was over, the planning, the waiting, the anticipation. It was pure adrenaline. I have had problems dealing with this adrenaline stuff (cue eye rolling) vis-a-vis panic attacks in the past. The so called "fight or flight" mechanism being something I do not particularly relish. But this was in a league of its own. When the car pulled up at the wedding ceremony venue the photographer (a lovely man named Stan) wanted photos of me in the car. He asked me to smile and my whole lip was quivering, it felt like I couldn't smile. In the waiting room one guest decided not to show up so we were held up. I don't remember it all too well. Then we went up the aisle and we had to stop for pictures; as my dad commented - this was as popular as I was ever going to be. Thank goodness. I know when I stopped being nervous though. It was exactly the point when Stuart looked at me (he didn't as I came up the aisle). Everything was then calm.

After the wedding we went on honeymoon, which is a whole other story that can mostly be explained by the pictures (which were recovered, thanks husband-o-mine!). Then we returned to Glasgow only to have to do a 10k run. This was completed yesterday with expressway crossings, nose bleeds and bloody colds inlcuded for free. 1 hour 8 mins 34 secs.

Now I lie here on the couch with my legs up, lap top on my... lap, indeed and I'm just gathering up all the string. Presents, thankyous, aching legs, Bath waters, stationery, dry cleaning and the inability to breathe are keeping me occupied as I do the famous Mrbob move of saving up my illness until all the work is over.

I am soon to return to university as a postgraduate. I note the difference now. Before you were induced to university by being thrown in the union (a not so tasty spot) for a week before term, now it is an induction with "wine and nibbles" included. Before you had to borrow to support the £3000 odd a year fees for the opportunity to work your arse off all year round, now they are paying this for me, plus a tidy sum to live off of. Not bad at all. I guess hard work does pay off after all. I will also be returning to my job at the disability service. Last year I was working as a scribe. This year they asked my to be a mentor and a tutor. Thoroughly impressed it seems. I choose to call this a promotion, why not?

For the next three weeks (the last three weeks before I have no more holidays ever, apparently according to my supervisor) I plan to do nothing. If you know me you know nothing is never nothing so I mean I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. High priorites are reading (fiction, for book club), sleeping during the day with my cats, some household stuff, and lots of baths. I'm going to be a homemaker for three weeks, I feel my new title deserves that.

Yours,

Mrs Findlay.

wedding: the process of removing weeds from ones garden

I've not really blogged about it thus far, save few practical updates, but it is 5 days away and the time has really come to do so. Ask me when I'm getting married? For a long time it was 'once I graduate' or 'the summer after next'. After christmas etcetera it became 'this year!' and '27th august'. Recently it became months, then weeks. I know I was supposed to have the rapid fire answer of "ONLY x days" on whatever occasion but I never did, I just knew it was coming, I knew it would come with autumn.
Last Sunday Stuart and I went to Kelvingrove park for the last day of summer. It was warm and humid and you could have been in a swimsuit but I had called the change in the season a week or so prior. One morning I woke up and the sun had become white. I opened the window to air the bedroom and there was a sharpness to breathe, something of freezings coming for far away. A few days ago it was windy and the washing line flapped violently. For the first time since April pegs fell from the peg holder. I ritually cleared the summer garden, took in the last carrots and potatoes and pandered to the parsnips and leeks. Thoughts turned to bulbs. Last night I was waiting for the washing machine to finish lest it burn my kitties alive and I looked out the window. At 10pm it was deeply dark, the ground was wet and the rain should have been gentle but the gusts splattered it abusively. It was autumn already and not just a touch, it is now coming thick and fast.
We are going to Bath for our honeymoon and then onto London. I expect that autumn hasn't quite the grip in the south of England yet that it has here, so we will be in the roof top spa and hopefully the last of summer we will bask in for a day.
So the wedding has come. All I have heard from friends, family, gift-givers, well-wishers and gossipers alike has been just how fast it will come in. It will come in in no time. It'll be the wedding and you won't know where the time has gone. To be sure I do know where the time has gone; it has gone into my degree and the painstaking planning and arranging of every detail of this DIY wedding. It has become like a living thing, constantly needing care and attention so it survives. Friday is its coming out party and then it will be fully grown.
I've done a lot for it. My printer is tired of bleeding ink in monotype corsiva, my hands are tired of glueing, my brain is swarming with guests and my sofa bed it fed up with being a holding bay for boxes of ivory coloured items.
I think it will rain on my wedding day. It feels like it is coming to it. Of late it has been humid or gusty or mildy drizzly; something has to give. It will probably be on Friday - and I have an umbrella.
I'm picking up my dress tomorrow, the dress that I knew was mine as soon as I stepped into it. It's demure you know. I'm looking forward to wearing it though I feel a bit of a fraud in it. I suppose that is normal. I'm just bobben you know.
I've been feeling sick for four days now. I feel nautious when I drink (anything, tea), I feel dizzy when I sit and weak when I stand, my head has been aching on and off. I've been running a lot and I havn't for a few days, I don't want to risk getting ill before the wedding. I've not been eating enough vegetables; I haven't had much money for a while so we have been living off of fish cakes, potato latkes (kosher for passover) and ikea meatballs - all frozen. I'll buy some more vegetables this week, from the greengrocer that opened finally on high street. I note high street as the new cool place soon, the new west end, so you know. Some folk still wouldnt visit though and it's better for that. I really want to run. We will go tomorrow, 6 kilometers only; it will suffice.
Stuart just left the room. After Friday everything is different. It is just him and me. And the cats though. We are a family now and self sufficient. He just brought molly through to join in the study party, what a sweetie. Both of them. I feel like after friday everything changes. It's good though. Here we come to winter and a career and all that stuff we have been working for for five years. It all culminates on Friday.

I'm getting married on Friday 27th August 2010 at 3.30pm and I'm sure I've offended so many people doing this. Oh well.

Silent Companions

You can get a lot of interaction without ever interacting with the other person. I actually think what I'm describing does count as interaction but I am sure others won't; it doesn't fit the conventional description. I looked in the cambridge online dictionary and found this definition for interaction

PEOPLE the activity of talking and doing things with other people, or the way you do this

So I suppose this means that you have to actively take part in the other person's life. This definition seems contrary to a passive or tacit version of interaction. I should now explain myself properly. I feel like you can have meaningful relationships with people you don't even know. You don't know thier name, you have never spoken to them, you may have never encountered them before in your life, and you may never see them again; but you can interact positively.
The most recent and prominent example I have is at the gym. After being at university for five years I finally decided to go to the gym. I don't know why I never did before and I've been running on and off for a year now, and exercizing longer, but I had never been. I went to this gym for the first time in the last two weeks and I've been back a few times. It is so much easier running distance on the treadmill but I have to be careful not to get too used to it as the GSR is on road.
You may be at the gym alone, you may not know anyone else there, but when you are all the there, all doing the same thing, all (or mostly) trying to hit some sort of goal, there is a definiate community vibe. I don't mean like GO TEAM or anything, I mean just the most subtle of understandings. Within this community there are different relationships.
There is the healthy competition. The second time I went there there was one man running opposite me. He had been going before I started and I ran 6 kilometres, 5 at a pace and the 6th going slow to fast alternating minutes. When I first started to slow down on the 6th kilometre he was looking over, glancing at my treadmill, assuming I was stopping, then I ran again and he continued. The timer ran out on the treadmill and I wanted to walk to cool off so I was stopped momentarily before starting again. All through this he was looking over, preparing to stop. Then I started again and he kept going. Once he realised I was on cool down he then stopped too. He wanted to outlast me. I had a sort of respect for him, using me as a barometre for his own performance.
There is also unhealthy competition, most often between the same sexes. I haven't taken part in this interaction but I can see it happen. If a slim woman is in the gym, any other woman of similar body shape is a threat. It may be a few glances or just the tension that gives it away but when you are running it seems that you go into some sort of half awake beta mode and your human traits are lessened and you natural ones heightened. The same goes for two men. This isn't based on a visual so much as on performance. Weight becomes heavier, repititions quicker, pace increased. Last night one man was pounding so hard on the treadmill beside me I thought he would break the whole thing. He was running at 10.5km/hr and kept on jumping off the machine instead of slowing it down.
There are positive forms of interaction too like the silent companionship the title is about. Someone who is doing a similar pace to you or a similar style of running can become a disposable ally. This starts as an inkling that they are running for similar goals to you. As you keep going it becomes clear who isn't on the same wavelength as some people stop, some people walk and some people out perform you. Sometimes someone is so similar its like you are watching yourself. These people tend to be beside you, not opposite. Healthy competition breeds this.
I guess from this description the second definition in the dictionary of interaction is more applicable:

THINGS when two or more things combine and have an effect on each other

Though people, not things, the definition is accurate. You can see for yourself by going to the gym when no one else is there. Or try to drive your car on empty roads without the people who are driving in a similar way to you. The drivers you respect for actually indiciating or returning to the left become close friends for however many miles you are going to the same place. The drivers who try to race you, who cut you off, who are irratic are your enemies and even in that there is a relationship of enmity, borne out of your difference, that you cling to. When the friends take the exit before you off the motorway you wave goodbye inside. When the enemies do it you are scornful yet dissapointed you couldn't keep the fight up and battle to your home.
Such situations are relationships. They do form companions. These companions will not last, they are non-permanent and once one is gone a new relationship will form as another car merges to the motorway or a new passenger gets on the train. The communities you enter as you go to these places where all are strangers are like delicate ecosystems destined to be destroyed within a matter of hours, minutes or seconds, and such an environment shall never exist quite the same again. This is the fun of it though. And your companions will merge to one eventually.
You can be lonely sitting at home. You can be lonely without conversation and without touch. But I defy anyone who doesn't beleive there to be interaction in such places. Conversation, touch and to some extent body language don't exist, but in these unobtrusive entities lives real companionship - the kind that won't dissapoint.

My friends aren't the same as your friends

I'm getting less and less concerned with who my friends are and how much effort I put into our relationships because, though I am loyal and I try to be a good friend - a great friend even - I am always let down by how much this isn’t reciprocated. I’m not going into gorey details but I’ve been let down and hurt a lot by ‘friends’ in my life. Nothing serious, just a lack of commitment. When I watch the television, or hear other people talking, saying things like “I love my friends, I don’t know what I would do without them” or “my friends are like my family” I don’t understand this. At first I thought, wow I need to find my group of friends who would do anything for each other and be there no matter what. Then I started to realise that this wasn’t going to happen, and I thought, wow I must be some kind of monster who no-one wants to know enough to care that much about. Now I am realising that it is all a lie. These people don’t exist, they are a phantom made up by cutesy script writers and people who want others to know how many people like them and just how much. Well no-one likes me. I think seriously now I have three people I would call friends and to be honest I don’t see it lasting. I’m not trying to sabotage relationships here I am just resigning myself to the fact that if I put in the effort I should to it, it wont be returned; and there is no way I’m giving more than I get anymore. Sorry to sound pompous but no-one like that is worth my kind thoughts.
I know exactly where this stems from. When I was in Primary 6 at school I had a best friend: Jenny. Jenny and I had been inseparable for years, we did everything together, we shared a lot, we played, it was the typical long time best friend scenario and the type of friend you are meant to keep forever. In Primary 6 a new girl, Kim, came to the school and became friends with us. Kim liked horseriding and so did I so we became friends too. For some reason or other one day Kim and I fell out. I know this will sound ridiculous but bear in mind the country bumpkin back drop to my childhood as you read. Kim said to me “you are a bitch, and you know it!” I was shocked and hurt. I expected Jenny to be shocked too, and to back me up; instead she sat on the fence. She didn’t jump to my side, she didn’t ignore Kim, she acted as a go between. Some may think that this is what they would have done, that she was trying to keep the peace and reconcile friends. To those who think this: that is a pile of crap. If someone attacks your friend, who you truly care about, you should have their back. You should support them and them alone. I don’t care about any other circumstance, that’s the way it should be. With my best friend, if anyone did anything to him, said anything to him or touched a hair on his head I would do anything and everything possible to make sure the person that did it knew just exactly what they had done and how wrong it was. It doesn’t matter that my best friend happens to be my fiancé too, I would do that for anyone who put as much effort into being a friend as he did before we got together, and after that. I expect that, outside of family, there is no-one else in the world who would do this for me, and that’s ok. It really is ok. I’ve accepted this.
So from now on I’m not putting the effort in with trying to keep or make friends. With the friends I have left of course I won’t neglect them, I will continue to be a friend, but once bitten twice shy and now I’ve been bitten repeatedly and I really should have learned by now. I’m not going to be the one to always get in touch first. I’m not going to be the only one who texts back, I’m not going to be the person who puts effort into making great plans only to be let down at the last minute. From now on I am a passive friend and if I meet anyone else who really wants to know me it’s going to be their hard work that gets them in alone, save marrying into my family.

This blog has been so depressing recently and probably doesn’t make happy reading so I apologise for this now. I’ll try and make it lighter and less of a sob story next time.

Loss

This is going to sound so odd. I don't mean to offend any one who has had a lot of people-loss and I don't mean to make this in anyway parallel to it.

My sunglasses broke. It was my own fault. I killed my new headphones intended to be put in the ear pads of my pilot's hat. I did that too. I keep on destroying things that mean a lot to me.

I've always had a passion for things. When I was young I had a lot of toys, on my mum's side of the family Jamie and I were the only children, only grandchildren, only neices and nephews. I don't mean I had a lot of toys because I was a spoiled child, I mean I ended up having a lot of soft toys in particular. I liked dogs and subsequently horses as a girl and became obsessed in turn and as it goes all presents for birthdays and christmases revolve around this. My original favourite toy was Jerry Mouse (of tom and jerry) I had tom too but I liked Jerry best and I was too young and undemocratic to care for poor tom. After this I got Tracker, a soft toy dog. He was (and is) a golden labrador in sitting position. I remember picking him out for my birthday (I think) at Toys R Us when Mum allowed me to look at the vast racks of soft toys and choose one as a present. I picked Tracker and he was my best toy for a very long time. I remember the harrowing experience of taking him into a shoe shop and leaving him on the seats where you try them on (I must have been about 7 years old). When I realised I was only at the other end of the shop playing with Jamie but I ran back and he was gone. My Mum soon found him in the arms of another child who thought he was a toy provided by the shop.

As I grew up this became of objects not so much just toys. Of late Pingin has been key. Pingin is a bed warmer (with a pouch you heat in the microwave) penguin (Edward Monkton's penguin of death). Stuart bought him for me what will be three christmases ago come December (i think!). I didn't really like penguins particularly but for some reason (probably the fact pingin isn't based on a penguin but a crazy drawing of one) he was so endearing. He has become another entity and part of the house.

I think I have a problem. I can't stand it to lose things, especially favoured items but really anything I lose myself. Indeed I would be sad to have someone else damage or lose something I owned but I would accept it or replace it with no worries. If I lose it or damage it though, I can't forgive myself. I've been in an odd place for the last few days, stressed and run down, highly strung it seems. I bought the pilot hat online and I predict that it will be a new trend but for now it is my hat alone. A Biggles hat. It has these two round pads over the ears (see tumblr for a photo around this date) and a few people who have seen it commented on how great it would be to have headphones in these pads to listen to music through. In concurrence I bought a pair of fairly cheap head phones at Tesco and set to putting them in. I figured I would remove the band that goes over the head and then have two seperate ears to put in the hat with cables coming down. So I got the scissors and cut straight into the plastic of the head phones. It melted through and then snapped. Then I looked closer. The cable for the headphones went into one ear only, climbing under the head band to the other ear. I had ruined them. They were defunct. I killed them. It wasn't frustration at the waste of money, and it wasn't irritation at my lack of caution (though I should have been more careful) it was the fact that these were made as headphones. They were made by someone or something, packaged and sent. Travelled in a lorry, perhaps a ship or plane, to a storage facility then on to Tesco and in the stock room. The worker sees a gap in the stock and goes to fill up. Onto the stand go the headphones; ready to be bought and used. Then I ruin them. And that's the end. All over.

The sunglasses were even harder. I went ot B&Q with mum. we took a trolley and I clipped them onto the front of the trolley. They were from Topman and resembled Rayban Wayfarers. They had these wee ballbearings, two on either leg. As I walked later on with mum to costco i put my hand in my bag for them and it dawned on me sickeningly. We drove back. For sunglasses that only cost £12, and that i could replace easily. I found the trolley back inside and I saw them and my heart rose and I felt safe, they were ok, it wasn't the same as the head phones. I hugged them in close, going back to show mum when I felt it. one of the lenses was gone. glasses with one dark eye and one transparent. It was like holding a corpse. I checked the trolley, the floor, other trolleys. It was useless. What was worst was that someone was walking around B&Q with my poor lense in their trolley.

In the end I replaced the glasses. Still hurts though.