Fake 189

Captured in the waiting area of the opticians noticed at reference 1. After which it prompted a discussion about the relative costs of plastic orchids and real ones.

On the one hand, real ones are not that dear these days and the flowers last a long time. They do not need a lot of care, and one might think that the people at the desk in such a place would have plenty of time on their hands in the course of a day to attend to such things.

On the other hand, looking at this one, a fair amount of work must have gone into its assembly. Dull work, but fiddly. And then the thing is going to need to be washed from time to time - washed by hand too, as I don't suppose it would stand a washing machine, even on gentle wash.

At the end of the day though, they must have decided that plastic was a better deal for them. Perhaps they just buy them in by the dozen, all ready to go, from the opticians' sundries man.

PS 1: and thinking of fiddly work, after I posted reference 1, I read that the founder of the firm, back at the beginning of the 20th century, cut his teeth by grinding the lenses to go into the spectacles. It must be a long time since opticians stopped doing that. From where I associated to a chap I used to meet in TB who was an expert on turtle shells, used in his day to make the frames. Which in his case, involved occasional visits to the turtle shell warehouse where they were all stacked up, to make his selection.

I remember turtles, which is certainly where things started, but a quick Bing suggests that tortoise was more common by the time the whole thing was banned in the mid 1970s. So my informant must have been older than I realised at the time. See references 3 and 4.

PS 2: nearly all the stuff turned up on turtle shell frames by both Bing and Google comes from people selling spectacles. I find it slightly odd that no-one else has got in on this one.

PS 3: glad I did not make my living in the way of the chap at reference 5. I associate to ambulance chasing lawyers and tax evasion accountants. Legal, but unsavoury. From where I further associate to an unsavoury barrister up north who specialises in getting people off motoring offences on technicalities. For the first of these see reference 6. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolleys-832-833-and-834.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/fake-188.html.

Reference 3: https://historywiththeszilagyis.org/hwts021.

Reference 4: https://rgsf.com/the-fascinating-history-of-tortoise-shell-in-eyewear/.

Reference 5: The man behind the rise of ‘golden passports’: Christian Kälin of Henley & Partners says landmark court ruling against selling EU citizenship scheme will not stop trend - Laura Dubois, Josh Spero, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 6: NHS medical negligence liabilities hit £58.2bn amid calls to improve patient safety: Public accounts committee called the record sum ‘jaw-dropping’ and criticised inaction to reduce errors in a damning report - Denis Campbell, Guardian - 2025.

Group search key: fakesk.