Monday, June 25, 2018

Blind spots

It was the Quaker meeting picnic in our garden yesterday, after a cycle up from Bakewell on the Monsal Trail. Dave and I had set out games - table tennis, horseshoe throwing, boules and crokinole. It was so hot, though, that most of the adults lounged in the shade, eating and talking. 

I noticed one Friend checking his phone a lot - very unusual for him, most unusual for him - and then heard his wife saying: 'Don't tell me! Don't spoil it for me!' and I wondered what was going on.

Then this morning, the front page of my online daily Guardian (that I get on subscription) looked like this:




and I wondered what the picture of the boys in the street with all the flags was about. Was it to do with the World Cup? Had England been playing yesterday and won? I didn't even glance at the big picture, bottom left, of the footballers. I never look at the bottom left of the front page because that's where the sports news is and I automatically blank it out. But isn't it big? How could I blank it out everyday? 

Anyway, talking of impaired vision, I had my left eye lasered on Saturday. A few years ago I had cataracts fixed in both my eyes. They took out the cloudy natural lenses from my eyes, and inserted new artificial ones. But there'd been protein build-up on the left lens which had meant my left eye vision has been cloudy for several months, and it needed dealing with. So I was referred to a Saturday NHS clinic where an eye doctor zapped it. I was only in the consulting room for five minutes, and that included signing the consent form. The result was amazing! It was as if someone had cleaned the window on the world and someone else was holding up a spotlight on it. The geraniums were a sharper pink, the leaves of the sedum a bluer green. Wow. Now I realise that my right eye, which I've been depending on, is in the early stages of cloudiness. I trust that will be dealt with too in time. I LOVE the NHS.

p.s. The best thing about the World Cup is that the Trail is unusually quiet. Long may it continue.



2 comments:

marmee said...

I have worn reading glasses for a very long time but at my last test I was told that I now legally need long distance glasses to drive with as well..of course i got them but thought it was all so much fuss and bother. Then I put them on and nearly turned the car over! The mountain and the ocean all in crisp relief, the people on the street with so clearly soon I would be able to identify each one in a line up. It was such a delight as if everything had come closer and had also been polished quite vigorously!

Sue Hepworth said...

It feels miraculous, doesn’t it?
Aren’t we fortunate?