What d’ya wanna make those eyes at me for?

I had to get dressed today as I had an appointment at the opticians. I put on a pair of trousers that were loose enough to pull down when I needed to without having to undo the button or zip. Which was nice.
I put in my contact lenses, first time since April, and applied some posh lipstick and mascara. Which was nice.
Then I wore some fancy shoes that rubbed a bit but were casual and flowery. Which was nice.
Then I drove into T’wells.
I’ve got a moth that has taken up residence in my little red car. There are those who would tell me to roll up a newspaper and kill it but I can’t. I’m like the Hindus with their sacred cow. I have no desire to commit murder. The moth flutters around the cab and terrifies me in case it gets in my line of vision. It’s a big orange thing with a massive head. Where it lives when the car is parked is anybody’s guess, It’s a bit like Schroedinger’s cat. When I’m not in the car, and it gets dark in the garage, does the moth still exist? Or does it only materialise when I get into the car and turn on the ignition? Only Mr.Moth and Mr. Schroedinger will ever know.
Anyway, Mr. Moth (I’m assuming he’s a he but she may be a Mrs. Moth for all I know) and I drove through the traffic and parked opposite the Italian shop that has closed down because of the arrival of a baby boy. It’s taken them all by surprise. Making fresh pasta everyday and looking after a new born has obviously taken the biscotti because the windows are papered over and the shelves empty.
I walked to the optician and bought a pair of reading glasses to go with my lenses. Not in an accessorising sense, but to enable me to make out little print. You see, my lenses give me an overview. I need readers to help me see what’s in front of my nose. My mascaraed eyelashes were so long – and yes, unlike Penelope Cruz and L’Oreal, I am telling you the truth – that they pressed up against my new royal blue frames. But I bought them anyway ‘because I’m worth it’.

Aileen Elizabeth Sawers Boptom MCIotim came down and collected me from the reception. We went upstairs to her little room: Two desks, three machines, a picture rail round the walls and a mirror. No more projected letters on a screen. Oh, no! Those ever-decreasing lines are now digitalised. Aileen said it was state of the art. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference to me because either way I can’t read them.
After the first two massive lines, which a myopic bat with stigmata could read, I make it up. All the ‘d’s looked liked ‘g’s, all the ‘h’s looked like ‘k’s and everything else looked like the first two pages of the Torah. I had an Irish girlfriend who used to memorise the letters in case she got them wrong. She came from a Jesuit background, sticklers for education. She didn’t realise that getting the letters wrong was right, so she learnt them by heart so she could pass her eye exams with flying colours. By the time she was a teenager, she was practically blind. Those Jesuits, eh?
I sat down in the big black ‘Mastermind’ chair. Ms Sawers switched off the lights. I half expected John Humphries to ask me my profession and chosen subject. Have you noticed how the contestants all have funny walks, and then they have to make their way to that big black chair without any accompanying music. It’s like dining with strangers and having to listen to their mouth mechanics as they eat. You would think the BBC could provide a little background atmosphere for them to sashay to as they take their seat. After all, what do we pay our licence fee for?
Anyway, I sat very still in the chair as Aileen handed me the ‘trial frames’ to put on. You know the ones – they make you look like an educationally challenged Stan Laurel.
Aileen slipped a lens in the left eye holder and told me to read the keratometer, which measures the curvature of the front of the eye. The red and green shapes get clearer, or darker, fuzzier or brighter depending on what disc she drops into the slot. There is always the chance that you may answer incorrectly and go out with a pair of milk-bottle tops that make you look like Mr. Little from Little and Large. All questions are asked very gently with the same non-committal intonation whilst all answers end with an upward inflection – a kind of begging approval.
‘Which is clearer? The green or red?’, asked flatly.
‘Green?’, with just a hint of desperation.
Then the optician points her torch up at the picture rail. Each instruction said s-l-o-w-l-y and c-l-e-a-r-l-y. Then, like a South American torturer, the bright light is shone directly into your eyeball. All instructions are repeated E-X-A-C-T-L-Y the same for the other eye. The measured pace would try the patience of Saint Augustine who himself said ‘Patience breeds Patience’. Well, he has never been to my optician. Then the ophthalmoscope is wheeled over. Chin on the chin-rest and young Ms Sawers looks right into your soul, checking that all your eye bits are in perfect working order. Checking that the lens hasn’t got denser and thicker with age. I always knew it but now it’s been confirmed: the older I get, the thicker and denser I become. Ms Sawers said so and she’s got an ‘ology from Cambridge so she should know.
Then it’s up and three paces over to the tonometer. Now, this used to be operated by hand. The optician would wait until you were perfectly relaxed then freak the hell out of you by puffing air into your naked eyeball to measure its pressure. Now the machine is automated. It adjusts to your position and quite callously blasts a puff of air onto your eyeball. No emotion, no empathy, just an automated ‘phouff’ without any sentiment.
Very 21st Century, don’t you think?
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got the bill, although they had just been examined, and seeing is believing, as Ms Sawers would say.
Back home to walk the dog briskly. It was cold and grey today. The wind whipped up and it felt like November. The oats in the fields have been flattened by the rain and the cob nuts have been blown of the trees. The squirrels had better get picking them up soon otherwise they’ll have nothing for their winter store.
I nipped into the Twillage to buy dog and cat food then it was off to hear some music in the Pantiles.
There were several people gathered around tables, ordering food, drinking wine and pretending that it was the Montreaux Jazz Festival and 22 degrees in the shade.
Unfortunately it was freezing and not unlike Eastbourne in February when the tide is out and all the coach parties have gone home to have a Radox bath. I was so cold I ordered bangers and mash and a hot chocolate. Not together, you understand. There were at least three saxophone solos between them.
I left at 10.00 and stepped into the cottage, put on the central heating and stepped out of my clothes in the bathroom. You see, had I been wearing my pj’s, I could have kept them on and stepped into my bed.
Anyway, it is now 12.30. The world has gone to bed and I need to walk Jackson to the end of the drive to do his stuff. I bought a new torch today which I fixed to the wall. Jim is going to be horrified. I hammered two holes in the wall, big enough to put rawlplugs into, whatever they’re called, But I had to make another big hole and make a re-adjustment because the torch wouldn’t fit under the wok. I tried to get in the screws but they didn’t really hold so I squirted superglue behind the plastic fitment. Trying to get it off will pull half the wall away. And what if we want to to move? Jim will kill me when he reads this. I can see him putting his head in his hands and wondering why he didn’t marry Barry Bucknall. It would have been a happier partnership – they could have talked about screwing all night whilst comparing their nuts.
Nuff said. Night night. Cusoon.