One Koali, two Koali, three Koali, four...

A very exciting thing almost happened to me last Friday.

The Koali sales rep had an appointment with the lovely Mark Blankstone at 10 a.m. He was to be bringing the new range of designs with him. I had been granted permission to muscle in on the meeting. (This sounds exceedingly tolerant, I know. But Mark is quietly confident that Editor see Koali, Editor undergo brief struggle with conscience, Editor buy Koali.)

I set my alarm and got up early. I made a careful decision about which pair of Koali specs I would wear. I got to the shop just before 10. The rep wasn't there. He had had to cancel his visit to Mark in favour of an emergency dental appointment.

I was disproportionately disappointed.

Weary and footsore, I returned home. Following a slightly confusing conversation with a man from the electricity board who was adamant that someone had rung at midnight to complain that there was no power in the flat below mine - the flat which has been unoccupied this last five years - I applied myself to Google.

And I found what I had been looking for. Something which I truly don't think was there the last time I looked. You can now buy some of the Koali frames online. (Which, given the number of people who have visited this blog after doing a bit of Koali-Googling of their own, should please one or two of its less regular readers no end. Certainly Melbamae got quite excited when I passed on the good news. Particularly when she discovered that the frames come out at only about £70 apiece.)

Now, the drawback is that the illustrations aren't that good. Looks to me as though someone has scanned them in from the relevant pages of the hard-copy catalogue. You'll need to go to the maximum enlargement they offer to get any real idea of what the frames look like. And, even then, the colour reproduction is a tad dodgy.

So, to give you a better idea of what Koali frames look like when they've been lit and photographed well, I've illustrated this post with a few photos which I have dredged up from the depths of Google Images. Purely because I'm nice like that and not at all because I have what Mark calls "spectacle-sickness". Oh no. Perish the thought. Not me, guv. Etc.

The Editor

PS This last one is, I'm assuming, a promotional shot for the new designs. And, really, you've got to take your hat off to anyone who can come up with designs for spectacle frames based on a jellyfish...