Very foxy, Sandra.

I do confess to being in the Point Leo Surf Club (Westernport Bay, where the surf rivals that of Tootgarook, on Port Philip Bay) but that was before surfers used legropes.

But I started my familiarity with legropes in South Gippsland, well before herringbones came into fashion, where dairy farmers would use a legrope to stop the cow kicking the cups off the teats or, for handmilkers, kicking the bucket over.

And I first tied my glasses on with one when climbing at Mt Arapiles, when I was a much younger fart. A friend had told me that the Vic. Optometry College was doing a deal for students who wanted contact lenses, whereby the prescription cost was waived and only the cost of the lenses was required of the student. Being very myopic (in most senses) I put off making an appointment for a while. At Mt Arapiles I was thrutching my way through an awkward bit of shrubbery about 150' up a new climb.

I'd taken the precaution of tying my specs on but they got flicked off. Fortunately they landed on my shoulder, as I was unable to see details of the rock ahead and couldn't even see my footholds in focus; I couldn't even tie off and abseil down, as my rope was the standard 120' and I would have been left 30' above the foot of the climb. Bother!!!

So I made an appointment to the VOC, turned up and waited my turn to be dealt with by one of the trainees. A young lady with a clipboard called my name and took me to the cubicles where the eye testing clobber was located; we sat in our respective places. After the 'name, rank & serial no.' stuff she asked,
"Why do you want contact lenses?"
"Why do you ask?" I responded.
"Most people say 'Sport', which is really just disguised vanity" she replied.
"Well, sport" I offered. "Actually, I've got three reasons for wanting them" I said.

I told her the Mt Arapiles story and followed it up with my irritation when, during winter, every time I walked into the Sports Union showers after a Judo Club night, the (cold) lenses of my glasses would instantly fog over in the humid atmosphere. I then described my third reason.

"They get in the way in situations of great propinquity" I said.
"Huh?" she grunted.
I explained, "When you're having a nice cuddly session with a lady you're interested in, the glasses get in the way. But if you take them off it has exactly the same effect as if you'd dropped your daks and whipped a condom out of your pocket! That's the end of that."
"Oh!" she commented and we continued with measuring my eyes.

A couple of years later I needed to go to the VOC for another appointment. The young lad who led me to the cubicle looked at the clipboard and commented, "You're a bit of a climber."
"How did you know that?" I asked.
"It's given here as one of the two reasons you wanted contact lenses" he replied.
"Only two reasons?" I asked.
"Yeah. The other was your glasses fogging up in the Sports Union."

So I told him the third reason and it transpired that the young lady (whose name I still remember) was now his practicum supervisor.
"Well, you get right up her about censoring people's reasons for wanting contact lenses," I said. "If wearing glasses gets in the way of a young man's courting behaviour and this can be rectified by wearing contact lenses, that's a perfectly good reason for wanting them."

But my reading glasses need a bit of a legrope so I can keep track of them.

Cheers, Rowan