As one of my neighbours read a passage from the gospels earlier in the year my mind strayed to the importance of the sense of sight. I think it was during the passage where a blind man is miraculously healed and then couldn’t stop himself from jumping up and down in delight.
A quotation from Sherlock Holmes then came to mind in which he tells his friend Dr.Watson, “You observe but you do not see, and yet I perceive your eyesight is as good as my own.” In this passage, the writer Conan Doyle was possibly wondering how it is possible to see something without instantly also connecting it with data already in one’s head. It is because the picture in our head doesn’t match the thing our eyes are seeking that can make us blind to the obvious.
My earliest recollection of this mental oddity was when, as a child, I was told to fetch the salt from ‘off the stone.’ (Readers may recall that years ago most larders or pantries contained a large stone slab and items were stored under or on the stone dependant on storage conditions.) My young mind contained an image of a salt pot which didn’t match anything I was seeing on the stone, and so I reported back that no salt was present. At this announcement my mother strode past and returned holding the salt jar whilst, at the same time, giving me the kind of look every woman gives when she locates an item invisible to the eyes of a male.
The kind of disconnection between the eyes and the brain which causes us to miss salt cellars can also cause us to miss other things. For example, some years ago when I was deciding whether to buy a polytunnel I looked in all kinds of national magazines but eventually discovered a local supplier in Rudford who sells just about the most useful garden polytunnel on the market. A more recent example came when trying to locate a suitable neck breaking device for large (twenty pound) chickens. A call to the Humane Slaughter Society and worldwide searches of the net proved fruitless until by chance, I spotted an advert in Country Smallholder for just the device from Fosters Poultry of Gloucester.
All this goes to show that the grass you see on the other side of the hill isn’t always greener, and that just because something is local doesn’t make it less worth looking at than something from far away. In other words we don’t always see things in their full and proper perspective.
When I started wearing glasses as a boy there was a choice of frames between NHS wire frames (aka John Lennon) or, for a fee, one could choose from a small selection of plastic styles. My parents opted for the free ones, and from that time I have mused on the various types of spectacles from the monocle worn by the TV star gazer Patrick Moore, to the pince-nez as used by the Oscar Wilde character Lady Bracknell of ‘handbag’ fame.
I have always yearned to wear half moons but my long sightedness does not make them a practical proposition. David Dimbleby however uses his half moons to great effect. He and many Judges create an effect of mysterious superiority by using the lower half to obscure their own thoughts, but peer over the top to obtain a distant and detached insight into the world of others.
A few years ago new lens and eye testing technology led to the consolidation of optical services under national brands and as a result, many local opticians became associated with national branded chains and national health glasses virtually disappeared. These were replaced by frames and lenses of bewildering choice, so much so that plastic lenses, designer frames, dark reflectors, varifocals, reactions lenses and a huge variety of coatings now make a trip to the opticians feel a bit like the time when I spent a whole day following my teenage daughter around Bristol in a search for shoes. She whizzed around trying on the every pair of size fives in the city, only to tell me on the bus home that there was nothing to suit her and that maybe a shop in Oxford would be better!
My daughter still sees shoe shops as emporia of exciting pedaeatric style and fashion. My male view is much simpler: black or brown! These different views illustrate that how we see the world has an important impact on how we spend our time. Whereas she revels at going into shoe shops, I delight at coming out of them.
Looking at things from different points of view is the stock-in-trade of the poet, and I expect most of you recall the words of Robbie Burns in the poem, ‘To a Louse’ he writes, “O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.” He is musing on how each of us want others to spend their time understanding how we feel, but that we are not as keen on seeing what makes them tick.
Talking about seeing things from different angles however, reminds me of the time when a market researcher rang my aged mother to ask her view on the future of the NHS. After being told how important her answer was for future government policy she replied, “I’m sorry I can’t see that far ahead, I’m wearing my reading glasses.”
View from the Pew 