Viewpoint: Diary of a Spectacle Designer

I’m sitting with my wife in a rather nice cabin passing through Drake’s Passage on the way to Antarctica. There are privileges to being an international spectacle designer. I’ve been gifted an expedition from Viking Cruises to look at icebergs, penguins and, most excitingly, going on a submarine 400 metres below the ice.

This is our first holiday without our kids. Free or not, choosing where to go on holiday without the kids for the first time is a big decision. We could have gone to the Maldives, but the memories of my kids jumping and splashing on beaches we’ve visited as a family in the past would haunt me. The other idea was to go on a safari, but my wife feared giant spiders would crawl in her ears or one of us would be eaten alive in the tent by a lion.