I can see!
I had to have an eye test on Saturday morning.
Well, truthfully, I didn't have to have one, but it's been two years since the last one and my trusty spectacles are getting so scratched everyone's beginning to look like they've been photographed with soft lighting. So off to the opticians I went.
They're wonderful places, opticians, these days. I've been a specky twat since I was about seven and I can remember old mahogany boxes filled with odd brass-rimmed lenses that slotted into a head-apparatus that wouldn't look out of place in a Terry Gilliam movie; squinting to read the last line of letters which, blurred, look like they might spell something smutty; flinching at the overfamiliar closeness and the unpleasant middle-aged bachelor odour of the optometrist; despairing at the nerdy design of those terrible NHS frames (now, apparently, well trendy). Heady times indeed.
Today the whole operation is much slicker, all electronic gizmos and different coloured lights. The optician's still slightly creepy, though. Something about being shut in a small darkened room with a strange man. And it's always a man. I've had my eyes tested by dozens of different people over the years and never once have I been seen by a female optometrist. Weird, that.
But all is well. Apparently my eyesight is marginally improved over the last test. Then again, everyone's focus tends to lengthen as they age and I've been short-sighted a long time. Who knows, perhaps by the time I'm sixty I'll have perfect vision.
Chance would be a fine thing.
Still, next Saturday I get my new specks. Maybe then I'll be able to see the screen without the words being surrounded by sparkly fuzz ;}#
Well, truthfully, I didn't have to have one, but it's been two years since the last one and my trusty spectacles are getting so scratched everyone's beginning to look like they've been photographed with soft lighting. So off to the opticians I went.
They're wonderful places, opticians, these days. I've been a specky twat since I was about seven and I can remember old mahogany boxes filled with odd brass-rimmed lenses that slotted into a head-apparatus that wouldn't look out of place in a Terry Gilliam movie; squinting to read the last line of letters which, blurred, look like they might spell something smutty; flinching at the overfamiliar closeness and the unpleasant middle-aged bachelor odour of the optometrist; despairing at the nerdy design of those terrible NHS frames (now, apparently, well trendy). Heady times indeed.
Today the whole operation is much slicker, all electronic gizmos and different coloured lights. The optician's still slightly creepy, though. Something about being shut in a small darkened room with a strange man. And it's always a man. I've had my eyes tested by dozens of different people over the years and never once have I been seen by a female optometrist. Weird, that.
But all is well. Apparently my eyesight is marginally improved over the last test. Then again, everyone's focus tends to lengthen as they age and I've been short-sighted a long time. Who knows, perhaps by the time I'm sixty I'll have perfect vision.
Chance would be a fine thing.
Still, next Saturday I get my new specks. Maybe then I'll be able to see the screen without the words being surrounded by sparkly fuzz ;}#
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