Sure, I did go away the pub with a stranger’s spectacles. No, drink was not concerned | Zoe Williams

I don’t even know why I took my glasses to the pub the opposite day; it wasn’t as if I’d should learn something. A very long time in the past, the canine casually inspected a Greggs bag and located a complete sausage roll in there; ever since, he can spot the branding from a mile away, and we tear in entrance of site visitors from one aspect of the A3 to the opposite, discovering related baggage, which often include solely crumbs. That’s me by a bar. I do know precisely what I’m on the lookout for – I don’t want literacy.

Nonetheless, I took my glasses, and the subsequent day, couldn’t discover them, and went again to verify their misplaced property. They did have some glasses; it seems they’ve a number of pairs and that is true of all of the pubs. Clearly, I couldn’t inform which have been mine as a result of I didn’t have my glasses. I might have put a pair on to verify the others, nevertheless it felt type of intrusive after I didn’t know the provenance, like breastfeeding another person’s child. M, the barmaid, was shedding persistence. As soon as she needed to cellphone me to inform me she had my keys.

So I simply grabbed a pair that appeared acquainted, went dwelling, and now that I had some glasses, was capable of finding my unique glasses, which I clearly hadn’t left within the pub in any case. Rating. Now I had two pairs of glasses, nothing like similar, besides to an individual not sporting their glasses. That is really a very good round economic system, I figured: anybody needing any glasses want solely go to a pub and ask to see their wares.

Having discovered nothing, although, I went again a couple of days later, sporting the sequestered glasses, and it out of the blue dawned on me that they need to belong to somebody, and there was no motive that somebody wouldn’t even be again within the pub. I appeared extremely furtive for the remainder of the night, at all times wanting over my shoulder for a squinting adversary.

Sure, this story has an ethical: you don’t want your studying glasses in a pub. If by some perversity you wish to learn and drink, take some miniatures to a library.