The things you do during lockdown. Lu broke her glasses. Rather her glasses broke. It was the first day of this phase six, almost everything shut-down lockdown. Meanwhile, she’s been wearing her glasses whilst driving the dinghy to free-diving club. She says she needs to see properly.

Like so many device-attached Gen Zers, she has developed long-sightedness. Trust a judgy Gen Xer to point it out. Still, she doesn’t want to run anyone over while driving the dinghy. Fair enough. And the only other thing which matches her prescription is her dive mask. She said she didnt want to wear her dive mask to free-diving club, whilst driving the dinghy. We thought it would look super-cool boat-kid of her, but she said no way. Go figure.

So, even though we’ve been soaking her glasses in freshwater when she gets back, one of the arm hinges snapped off from a build up of rust. Urgh, rust. The downsides of living on a boat.

The glasses aren’t old either – we only got them last November. They are really nice. Daresay not cheap. No U.K. NHS prescription for us in Bonaire. We had to accept this in the big, bottomless travelling pit pot.

Problem is that the opticians is shut during this lockdown. We went past their shop and checked. There is an emergency number on the door – but could they really fix them? Or order new ones in time? We decided at least to try and fix her glasses first.

A while back, Jack bought himself a small, precision Dremell multi-tool. Am I even spelling that right? I’ll check. Ok, Dremel got one less ‘l’ in it. Sorted. He has one of those with a mini-grinder on it and everything. With his Dremel, he painstakingly drilled a tiny hole in the broken arm, then through the side of her glasses, going through the now-defunct hinge. He then ground a nail to the correct length and put it in as a bar fitting arm back to frame. A bit of super-glue for luck. Read sizeable amount.

The glasses may not bend anymore but now they have real character. And Lu no longer has a red welt on her nose where her one-armed glasses (or glass, as Delph liked to refer to them in their one-armed phase) dug into her nose for the two weeks they were missing an arm. It is one of Jack’s victory fixes for lockdown. May it continue until lockdown ends. Hooray!

As a conclusion, Lu does drive to the freediving platform in her dive goggles. And for some strange reason, her snorkel in her mouth too. It’s one of the things I’m going to miss when things go back to normal. Wait, what is normal now?