2007-02-22
Valentines Day wasn’t the best (mind you, it’s never been a day that features big in my life). I had a date, though - with a Chinese gentleman.You’ll remember the saga of my niece’s eyes? Recap - Michael’s daughter was born with a cleft pallet a couple of years ago and recently they’ve been concerned that there’s something amiss with her eyesight too. Their doctor referred them to a specialist who got very interested in the fact that our father was also cleft pallet and our mother had detached retinas that made her totally blind before Michael was born. It turns out this is some form of hereditary problem that has a 50% chance of being passed from one generation to another and doesn’t skip generations. If his daughter and mother had the problem the likelihood was that Michael had it too. And so it proved, although he’d known nothing about it before hand he did indeed have detaching retinas which have now been rather painfully ‘seared’ back in place with lasers. The first eye was done under an anaesthetic injected into the eyeball, the second he opted not to take that and suffered some minutes of red-hot needles at the back of the eye.
So – if he had it there was a reasonable chance that my sister and I had it too and last Wednesday was the day of my check-up. Nah – no problems. But even though Michael had kind of prepared me I wasn’t expecting the examination to be quite so painful! First of all there were stingy eye-drops designed to dilate the pupil so that they could see right in (‘this is no bother’ I thought) and then after normal light started to get a bit painful to look at I was sat down and search lights trained on me from a distance of half an inch. Within seconds I could see nothing at all and started to understand the concept of ‘too much sensation’. But that was just the warm-up. Next I was lain flat on my back (don’t know where, couldn’t see) and each eye-ball was scooped to the side and up and down with what felt like a teaspoon while the intense light tick was repeated. But –as I say – no problems, so I staggered out into the sunlight and tried to identify large objects as buses that might take me home.
Last year on Valentines Day Kenny, the Fat Man and I went out with our wives because the local pub was doing a special offer for the day involving a meal and a ‘free’ bottle of wine. Actually the wine was so revolting that it was probably just an excuse to clear the cellar of the stuff. We’d joked that instead of three tables for two, or one table for six, we would get two tables for three and let the women talk amongst themselves while we did the same. Romantic eh? It was a great success and we decided to repeat the event this year, except that pub had no offer this year (cellar empty methinks) and has some problem with its drains (we suspect that’s what it is) that makes it smell exactly as though someone has been sick n the doorway. It’s been like that for months, fresh vomit smell – and you know how much I like that!
But unfortunately Lynne went down with the same ailment as I’d had the week before and took to her bed. Castigate me if you will, but she insisted I still went out for the meal, and so I did. Very nice it was too, table for five amongst all those tables for two (including a couple of old ladies who we thought might be aged lesbians, but were more likely brave widows celebrating their lost husbands together). I took Lynne back the heart shaped chocolate and a pink balloon.
I got my comeuppance though – she coughed all night and I had chronic indigestion so next morning I must have looked like someone who had really enjoyed the night of lurve.