The eyes have it

Back in the Royal Eye Infirmary for annual check up with the Great Man. A year since last seen and forgotten how stingy the pupil dilating eye drops are. I sit in a very crowded waiting room, have one “visual acuity” test after the other then stumble out with fuzzy vision to sit amongst the yellow and white waiting room literature, “Smoking and Sight Loss”and”Visual hallucinations” and “Early macular degeneration” and, “Emotional impact of sight loss”I can hear a man sniffing into a hanky on my left. Look up and wonder if he is crying or just has a cold.? Dangrous place this. No doubt people are confronting the most terrible of awfuls behind the rows of Consultant’s doors. . Sight loss Today however I get off scot free. How lucky am I. Must be more appreciative. A cataract is forming in my unaffected eye but slowly and vision currently very goodListening to Mevyn Bragg’s In Our Time last week, I was struck by Dostoyevsky who apparently lived by the maxim, “Every day is a gift” Bragg’s guests explained he had been put up against a wall in a firing squad but was by some means spared. I hand a note (in yellow) to the Receptionist . I am discharged.Must be more like him. Dostoyevsky. Like today, I have had very close shave with my eyesight in last 12 months. But I have been spared, for now at least unlike so many others in this waiting roomMust be more positive.