a view through my own eyes

It occurred to me some time ago that whilst one eye improves and the other slowly deteriorates that I could get into a position where visually things will be interesting.

Well I am fairly certain that that moments arrival is imminent.

The keratoconus in my right (non operated) eye is I think slowly getting worse, and its more noticeable at night. Highlights get scrambled and distorted beyond all recognition from time to time, darker shades get intermingled so I end up with scrambled bright points over a mushy grey brown. This is also not consistent, so one day its not so bad on others it is awfull.

At the same time my left eye (now called George) is getting better, come mid November the consultant will take another look and hopefully will start adjusting the sutures, which should clear up the worst of the distortion that I currently have and so I should be able to get a prescription lens for that eye.

However whilst I will be able to see with that eye, because I have never really used the eye then things are going to be really hard work. As although I can now see with the eye I don’t actually use it very much.

Yes I can choose which eye I mainly use. Apparently this is because when I was born and the eyes did not point in the same direction I never learnt to use them together to get a full stereoscopic image.

People learn to use both eyes together at around the six months mark according to my consultant – and the odds are against me being able to use the left eye properly.

I do try and use it every day, I can just about read a screen or a book but not for long, the brain feels like its been doing mathematical proofing by induction after a while (no I never did get to grips with it) and seriously aches after ten minutes or so.

The best metaphor I can come up with to explain this is to try to write with your other hand, its hard work, doesn’t feel `right`and aches and hurts after a while and your writing is crap as well.

Soon the clocks change here in the UK and so we will be leaving work in darkness, at that point I think that it is likely that I will stop driving for a while. As it is I try to avoid driving in darkness as I don’t know whether I am going to have a bad eye day or not. This makes planning things a bit interesting.

Worst of all its putting extra pressure on mrspao to learn to drive, I am not at all going to suggest that she does so. It is mrspao’s decision to make and to follow through. So be gentle with her.

Anyway back to the topic, we will be using the bus I expect and our feet, its a good forty five minute walk to campus from home, so as I said we will both get a lot fitter.

To be honest I no idea, not a sausage, a clue, a inkling or even the vaguest suggestion as to “What flavour crisps does James Bond eat?”.

However people out there interweb land seem to want to know and site referral logs to this blog indicate that it keeps being hit for the question “What flavour crisps does James Bond eat?”.

It does seem rather odd, and to be honest I am fairly certain that I have excaberated the situation by putting the phrase “what flavour crisps does James Bond eat” as a deliberate phrase in the mini awards ceremony that I ran here. Which does I guess make me a victim of my own, errr well success isn’t right, but I certainly am a victim.

So two objectives occur to me:
1. Try to get to be the number one hit on Google, Yahoo etc for the phrase “What flavour crisps does James Bond eat?”, so in order to work on this I would really appreciate it if you guys out there in interweb land could link to this page with the phrase “What flavour crisps does James Bond eat”, so that instead of all roads leading to Rome, all links lead here!
2. Actually find out what flavour crisps James Bond does actually eat!

No 1, is straight forward and requires minimal effort from me, you guys (and girls) just need to link back here with the phrase “What flavour crisps does James Bond eat?”.

No 2, is harder. James Bond in the sense of the agent created by Ian Fleming does not exist as a person, so I cannot ask him. Nor indeed can I ask his creator Ian Fleming as he passed away in 1964. I do not recall mention of a flavour crisps in the novels by Ian and I have read them all over the years and do not intend to read them again to find out (though it is a possibility).

So I think what I will aim to do is find out what flavour crisps Messers Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig actually do eat.

It is a difficult and whacky mission I know, but one that I am willing to undertake.

I will keep you posted.

Once again I had the pleasure of returning to the local hospital today, I am starting to wonder if I should get a season ticket. The bizarre thing is that I feel better now than I have done for several years.

Anyway today I was down there to give a blood sample, which in itself is not a major issue.

I arrived to find about half a dozen people in the queue in front of me, there were two nurses extracting blood, so by my reckoning in and out in about ten minutes – excellent. After a couple of minutes mayhem set in, loads and I mean LOADS of people all showed up, and each one put a docket in the fast track box, these have been issued by ward Drs in the hospital and so they get priority. Which means the riff raff like me had to wait. All in all I had to wait around an hour at which point the waiting area was down to me and a few other commoners sent in by their GPs. When I came out of the nurses room two minutes later the waiting area was packed once again.

I also took the oppurtunity to pop into audiology and request a followup appointment with Dave as the whistling at the top end still isnt quite right. The receptionist was not keen on helping, after suggesting that she actually read the last journal entry on my file she decided that perhaps I did need an appointment as her boss indicated. Next thursday afternoon – sorted.

Now is I think a good time to once again plug the local library. Over the last few months I have been after a particular audiobook (the title is imaterial), so every time I have have been in I have scoured the shelves only to be dissapointed.

Earlier this week (Tuesday now I think about it, don’t worry though I have had a lie down since) some rarely used part of my brain kicked in and so when I went to the library I asked about reserving the audiobook. Obvious I know, but there you go.

So I reserved the book, filled in the reply card and handed over twenty five pence for the postage of the card when the audiobook arrived. I asked when the book was likely to be available and the reply was: “when it is returned”, which is I guess fair enough considering I have been known to return books late. At this point I resigned myself to the fact that I may get it prior to Christmas – next year.

Saturday dawned, the postman arrived before ten, which in itself was a novelty and there was the green card, the audiobook was in!

To be honest I was astonished at how quickly it came in, I guess it was either returned or sat in another Kent library and was shipped over.

Either way I am both impressed and happy, now I just hope that all eighteen disks are readable.

“ello George, want another?”
“ooh tha ud be good Bert”
“right my shout it is then”
“cheers”
“aye”
“anyway I hear you had some fun earlier”
“oh indeed, we had some townies in”
“townies eh?”
“yeah, wandered in, all togged up for the ‘imalayas they were”
“cold was it?”
“nah don be silly, anyway looked like they ad been at it all day they did”
“at what? not that surely?”
“walking, they looked though they had been walking all day”
“ah”
“anyway they came in, ordered drinks and sat down over there where Doris is now”
“where Doris is?”
“yes, so anyhow I asked em where they came from, and they said from Pluckley”
“thats only over the orchard”
“thas right, anyway Jack was ere with me and had just been telling me about a couple of fools getting lost in his orchard and wandrin round for ages”
“an tha was them?”
“it was, so we gave them some advice”
“use the road next time?”
“no no no, told them there was a ruined church over by the corn field beyond the mill”
“not that old one!”
“aye – didna tell them that there was no ruins left these days though”
“hehehe”
“anyway off they went, then earlier this evening ole Sandy came in”
“did eh? I musta missed im wanted some flour”
“ah well, anyway Sandy said he saw them stomping round for a bit and then heading off round the back of the mill to tha road”
“didn’t go lookin for long then?”
“nah, anyhow they went off up the road toward Charing according to old Noakesy and went into his field to go round over to Lil Forstal – you know up yonder”
“not where Noakesys mad cows are?”
“aye thats the one, anyhow they went in and over to the next field and the cows were there”
“ooh”
“thats what the lass said along with yarrrr, heeelp and lets go”
“she didna?”
“she did, cor she was a screamer, seems that tha cows thought she were Noakesy and went off towards err like it were trough time and she were not too keen”
“he does like to keep em peckish”
“ee does at that, anyhow she run out o tha field like the wind, made her fella go as well”
“hehe”
“so they look at their map and decide to come back round this way and avoid that field by the look of it”
“oh how you know that?”
“saw em on the cctv thingy, didnt want to show their faces round the front of the pub in case we laughed I reckon”
“oh?”
“so they sneaked round the back, bush to bush like that mission err wossit”
“probable?
“nahhh, impossible, thats it mission impossible”
“that must a bit fun to watch”
“ooh it was”
“so Noakesys cows has driven how many walkers out of that field this year?”
“oh at least a dozen, harmless really, good fun though”
“heh must be my shout”
“cheers”

Today was the return to audiology as the new ear pieces were ready and since the K&C is an audiologist down there is currently an eight week wait for appointments.

I had two objectives for today:
1. get the new ear pieces and the hearing aids calibrated
2. certain tones were cutting out after a fraction of second which was bloody annoying, during speech they were fine, but music could be bloody awfull.

Well the first part of sorting out the ear pieces was straight forward. The ear pieces are fitted to the aids, they play tones to see what the aids are recording, then they play tones and see what my ears actually get inside by sticking tiny rubber tubes connected to microphones into my ears, then the stick the aids in with the tubes and do it again. Between the three combinations the sound can be calibrated. I point out that the ear pieces seem a tad tight on the painfull side, thats not a problem they can be smoothed off in house straight and so thats what happens.

The second issue was more of a challenge…

Because the noise drop was only happening on certain tones we had to track them down, so a scale is played, I shout “just there” or “thats the bastard” etc and a note is taken. At this point things the settings are adjusted and we give it another go. However none of this in a soundproof room is every a ‘real’ situation.

So I went for a stroll round the hospital and waved at mrspao in the waiting area, who looked most bemused and confused.

Things seemed reasonable, so I head back to audiology. As a sanity check a scale is played again and once again it triggers but only in the left aid for most of the iffy tones and then in both right at the high pitched end.

At this point the audiologist is scratching his head, and pondered and then tweaked something else. We agreed that its still a bit artificial just wandering round the hospital so I agree to dash to the car and enable the parking sensor as that was previously guaranteed to trigger the problem. So off I dashed and mrspao looked most confused.

I return five minutes or so later (yes I was lucky on the parking today as I managed to get close to the K&C – no I refuse to pay for the carpark so go on street). I report that yes the right aid seems fine but the left is no better.

The audiologist ponders and says that he needs the manager to see this as its most peculiar and he has not seen this to this extent before, and do I mind waiting as the manager is with another patient.

So I wait and report in to mrspao – who now looks less confused and has I noticed made a good start on the rainbow coloured sock.

Ten mins or so later I called back in. The manager (Dave) is there and first thing he says to me is, “We had the top man from Guildford down to see you before”! I crack up laughing, remembering the bloke with the dodgy facial hair who looked like he was straight out of Dickens’ Bleak House.

I explain what is happening and try to explain the effect that I am getting, apparently its quite odd and should not happen with these aids, I point out that it never happened with the old ones and I have only had it with the new ones.

Dave scratches his head, scribbles numbers down on a piece of paper, does the tone scale with me and I indicate when tones are being cut out. He scribbles more numbers down and says to me that the problem is to do with compression, for some reason the pain threshold tones to volume test I did may be causing oddities in the software.

At this point he says: “I think we may have to get the man in from Basingstoke”.

I really start laughing now.

Dave says he is serious, what is happening should not be happening it seems.

Then he says that he wants to try an experiment which he thinks may work.

So a few minutes later with reprogrammed aids we do the scale test again, and lo and behold its a whole lot better, not perfect at the absolute top end but much better where it was really annoying.

At this point we agree that it is getting late, so I shall see how I get on. I am told that if there are any issues or its still happening to phone in ask tell the receptionist to speak to Dave as he will see me as a late after hours appointment if need be (there is an eight week wait at the moment) as this needs sorting out.

Woo!

All in all a fortyfive minute appointment took two hours, and to be honest things seem a whole lot better, the new ear pieces seem to have reduced the occlusion but I will need a few days to be sure. Also the tones dropping out is considerably improved.

Two years ago my mum died.

She died of alcohol related liver disease, it was not a nice way to go, it was slow and painfull and took many years. The last few weeks she really suffered, of course by then it was far too late and she didn’t talk about it anyway.

She had her problems and alcohol was the way that she chose to deal with them, what caused her to originally start drinking the way that she did I will never know.

I am fortunate in that I can remember my mum when she was well, sadly my brother cannot.

In many ways I loathed her, hated her, resented her and wanted nothing to do with her.

There were periods in the last few years when she was almost herself, it was great to be able to share them with her and with mrspao, at least then mrspao got to see some of what my mum was really like. I loved her then and knew that she loved me.

When she died I was asleep in bed, I had been out and had a meal with some friends having been at mums bedside earlier that day. I know that whether I went out for the meal or not would not change anything in the slightest – she would still have died. But I feel as though I was so selfish by going out with friends rather than sitting there and being there for her, just being there with her at the end.

I have been meaning to get that off my chest for a couple of years now. Thanks.

Today the Tour of Britain passed through Canterbury, well actually the penultimate stage finished here.

Mrspao took the oppurtunity to make like athletes and take a five minute walk from our house to the ring road.

We waited and waited, other curious people passed us by and camped out on the roadside with cameras in hand.

The Police came out and stopped all of the traffic, then several different Police motorcycle display teams sped past. The support vehicles all labelelled up (Official Timekeeper, Race Control, Judge etc) appropriately sped past (not quite F1 with Mercedes AMGs – Skodas), then more Police, Marshalls, and then in the space of under two minutes roughly a hundred cyclists bombed past.

There are some pictures that I took here.

I am quite happy with some of these as its the first attempt I have really had at moving targets, I admit that I didn’t quite get the feeling of speed as they whizzed past, but you can certainly see the expression of effort on some of the cyclists faces. Still its good practice for me as next year the Tour de France has a stage in L’Angleterre and will passing through Canterbury and I think that a day off will beckon.

Mental note: when taking multiple shots like cyclists, ensure that highspeed shooting is enabled (5 fps) rather than lowspeed (3fps) – think I was paranoid about filling a 1GB card too soon, but then I didn’t realise that they would go through as one largish bunch quite so quickly.

On the way to Broadstairs yesterday (where a seagull shat on me as I took its picture – yes guano is in the shot), mrspao decided that she needed to “EAT NOW”.

I have learnt in the years that we have been together that when mrspao makes a statement as plainly and as effectively as that that we go straight to the nearest purveyor of culinary sustinence (unless its McDonalds – its really McShit), this matters not whether its a bloke called Dibbler selling Sosijis in a Bun or the Savoy Grill. Whatever is closest (except McDs) is where we go.

Yesterday M&S at Westwood Cross had the pleasure of me parting with cash, the food hall readily supplied mrspao with a sarnie and me with some sushi, which we ate on the bench outside.

After a while coffee seemed like a good idea, so we ventured into M&S’s Cafe Revive – where there is a selection of fine cakes, a huge coffee machine and someone to make it for you.

Once we had sat down with our cake and espressos I looked at the napkin, emblazoned proudly and unashamedly was “Cafe Revive only supplies FairTrade coffee”. We looked at each other, looked at the coffee and looked at each other.

To be honest it tasted awfull. Espresso to me is supposed to be bitter and yet smooth, its not supposed to be harsh and rough – sorry but I am not a coffee conoisseur and do not have the words in my vocabulary to fully express myself. My apologies.

Anyway the point I am trying to make, is that I feel for the Sri Lankan tea growers, the Columbian Coffee harvesters etc as they do need to make a living and through the FairTrade system they can and do, do so. But whilst the coffee (and tea for that matter) to be blunt continues to tastes appauling I am not going to drink it.

I also resent being forced to drink it in places like M&S who have made a company policy decision to supply only FairTrade coffee/tea.

What about those of us who want a good cup of coffee? Are we going to be forced to condemmed to not giving a toss about the world at large because we want a good cup of copy and continue to buy coffee from the larger organisations who perform greater quality control and ensure consistency of their product?

I don’t agree that big corporations should have the monopoly on produce, as can be shown that where possible we buy meat from the local butcher, vegetables from local farmers etc etc, these local suppliers produce wonderfull goods and we thoroughly enjoy buying and eating them.

It could be that I have FairTrade coffee wrong, perhaps I have been conditioned to enjoy overly processed coffee that is always consistent and does not taste like creosote. Perhaps coffee is supposed to taste like that, perhaps teabags are supposed to explode in the mug/pot.

But then that does not tally in with local produce being demonstrably better than mass produced supermarket goods. Which is right? I do know that when mrspao and I grew our own veg that it was much better that supermarket bought veg.

Which is right?

Is FairTrade merely a ride on a guilt trip? Why should I buy goods that I consider sub standard?

More importantly though, on the cappuccino cake I had in Cafe Revive there was a coffee bean, wonder if that was FairTrade?