Hot tip for low-cost specs

In which G.M. Norton alerts his dear readers to affordable spectacles.

I've worn glasses since I was nine or ten years old (mother may correct this upon reading).

A few years before this, my bespectacled best friend asked me to pretend my eyesight was worse than it was so that he wouldn't be the only glasses wearer in class.

Sympathising, but realising that this was absurd, I did no such thing and the optician declared my eyes to be fine. Of course, that changed so my chum eventually got his wish.

I still go to the same opticians that I first went to as a boy. A family-run business, I think it's important to support them and I trust them to look after my eyes. I get my contact lenses through them but their range of glasses is small and don't appeal. So I get my spectacles from elsewhere.

Always keen to find interesting styles, with price a keen factor in decisions, I stumbled across a Chinese company called Firmoo.

So two or three years ago, I ordered a couple of pairs for something ridiculously low like £25 for both.

The frame style was just perfect for me. I'd been eyeing similar pairs for hundreds of pounds so to get what I wanted for a relative pittance was really quite marvellous.

I had my regular eye test late last year and pleasingly, my eyes had stayed the same.

Keen to try some more pairs though, I had been looking at the frames offered by Cubitts in London. But with tempting emails from Firmoo coming through, offering a buy one get one free, I couldn't help myself and placed an order.

I ordered three pairs in the end, with the total cost, including delivery, coming to £70. I had the anti-reflective coating added this time which was about £15 of the £70 total cost.

Like my first order, my new glasses arrived from China to Blighty in less than a week.

And I adore them.

If you're in need of glasses, do consider Firmoo. I really can't fault them.

To see pictorials of wearing a couple of pairs, do seek out my Instagram page.

G.M. Norton

Protagonist of 'Norton of Morton'

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