Some people are terrified of visiting the dentist. I would be too - if I had one! It is the strange smells and sights you encounter that fill you with dread. In the old days you used to be gassed, now you just stay awake and, frankly, it's much worse. It's having to lie back in those sinister, evil-looking black chairs which is also traumatic.

I don't think so many people are afraid in the same way of their doctors. They either think they have a serious health problem in which case they avoid going to see them altogether. Or they worry about every ache and become a real pain to their GP as they flock to the surgery every two minutes. This pattern of behaviour often leads to the doctor becoming terrified of his patients and contemplating suicide.

But what about opticians?

I have always had an aversion to visiting the optician as I've always had very bad eyesight. And I mean very. At the age of eight I could no longer read the blackboard from the back of the class and so naturally I had to sit under the teacher's nose.

I started dreading visits by the school nurse and would rather wish to suffer the indignity of being told I had nits rather than be labelled short-sighted!

Eventually, though, my visual impairment was diagnosed. It was quite hard to disguise in the end especially as I once tried to catch a lorry to school!

But the suffering had only just begun.

Uncomfortable as it was to walk round as blind as a baffled bat, the thought of being bespectacled at that age when your friends are at the height of their name-calling frenzy, didn't exactly fill me with excitement.

They didn't even make me look clever - my glasses were thick as can be. However people must have thought that I had some ability in being able to balance those huge orbs of glass on such a little nose.

Unlike today when we have glamorous young things winning 'Spectacles Wearer Of The Year' awards, the only role model I had was Deirdre Barlow - and a lifetime of looking like her wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

But luckily contact lenses came along. I jumped at the chance to be rid of my specs even though it meant sticking bits of glass/plastic directly into my eyes, spending a vast fortune on cleaning materials and spending time actually er, looking after my eyes.

Only a few people wore them at that time. We would swap stories with each other of how we had once lost them behind the sofa/slept in them/ate them etc.

Now they are very common. Even boys wear them. And you can get so many different styles: clear, coloured, patterned, even the Union Jack if you are particularly patriotic.

But one thing that makes me wonder is how come we are all so short-sighted in the first place.

Finding someone with perfect eyesight is so rare. When I was little and used to sit in front of the TV I was warned that my sight would suffer. It did of course but is that the reason we are all so blind?

I can't imagine the cavemen having as may eye problems as we do. Or maybe that's why dinosaurs were so big

And maybe what led to their extinction was the invention of a pair of spectacles!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.