The Feedback column in New Scientist recently asked its readers

to describe your own Wallace-and-Gromit-style invention in no more than 100 words. Many of you focused on just one important aspect of the Wallace and Gromit canon: reading through your entries, it has been a revelation to us how many productive uses cheese – especially Wensleydale – can be put to. Knitting, mice running on treadmills and modified bicycles also figured in many of your inventions.

However of the five published winners, this was my favourite:

As well as having reactive lenses, these spectacles have a built-in rain sensor that activates lens wipers in wet conditions. There is also a light detector, which will switch on lights in the spectacle arms when it is dark, to help you see. In strong sunlight, a nose shield will automatically be unfurled to prevent unsightly sunburn on the nose. In extreme cold, the frame of the spectacles will heat up to help keep your face warm. The spectacles are powered by a small wind turbine attached to each arm. Stylish yet practical.

It was the small wind turbines that finally finished me off!

Maybe that’s because I went to the opticians this week for a new pair of specs, during which I discovered the new “must have” frames … they come with magnetic “clip-on” polarizing sunglasses. Magnetic? Where does magnetism come in? Well rather than clipping on to the specs with what one might term “adapted paperclips” they are held on by small magnets. On the sides of the shades (where the hinge would normally be) there is a small magnet. On the equivalent place on the frames, integrated into the hinge, is another small magnet. An instant docking mechanism. So simple when one thinks about it, and yet it apparently hasn’t been tried before; no doubt someone will tell me they’ve been around for years but I’ve never seen, or been offered, them before. OK, they’re not cheap, but in the overall scheme of things they aren’t expensive either especially when one considers that my lenses cost a week’s wages. Eeeekk!