IDon't know about you, but as I get older I find that the little things that years ago I thought were not of any great importance have now become quite important. Like the ability to do quite simple things being able to thread a needle, or read the Telegraph without first having to find my specs. I really don’t know why I am so bothered, as I have worn glasses since I was three.

You see, that was when I had whooping cough, which left me with a squint or, as they called at that time, ‘a lazy eye’.

For weeks I went to school with a patch over one eye, which they then thought would strengthen and straighten the other eye, but of course it didn’t and so I went through junior school and in to secondary education being taunted and cruelly teased by other children in the playground.

They would shout out ‘Hey? Who are you looking at me or him?’ or call out ‘I’m over here speccy four eyes’.

Oh yes, children can be so cruel but I don’t think they mean to be. I think it’s just their way of dealing with the things that they find different or unusual.

Funnily enough, as I got older the boys didn’t seem to mind my squint and I think in some peculiar way they found it attractive — or at least that’s what they said.

Now at that time, because it wasn’t life threatening or in any way important other than for your self-esteem, if you wanted treatment you had to go private.

So an eye straightening operation was something you had to pay for, as it was considered you were having it for purely cosmetic reasons so it wasn’t on the National Health.

When finally — after two operations — they were straight, I couldn’t stop looking at myself in the mirror and when out in town I would stop to look at my reflection in shop windows in order to reassure myself that they really were OK and my squint had gone.

Ah, vanity! All is vanity.