The Eyes Have It

There are certain key moments in life when you realise that age is making its mark upon you and that the passage of time is changing you irrevocably. Your first pubic hairs, that earliest experience of erectile dysfunction and, more noticeably, fading eyesight. For some teenagers, it could be all three at once.

After 3 days of screen glare and squinting from sunlight like a latter-day Dracula (and what a church that would be), I bit the bullet and booked an eye test.
“And when was your last eye test?” She asked sweetly.
“Er, can’t remember.” I replied, looking at the ceiling. At least, I think it was. 'Can’t remember' being a euphemism for ‘probably more than 15 years ago’.

Clearly, in my absence, it had all gone very hi-tech; even the form was digital. The place also performed hearing tests. I knew that because they had a massive ear on the wall. Either that or my eyes were really stuffed. Curiously, there was no giant eyeball on another wall, presumably so as not to scare children. And me.

We did the second set of tests first – I never found out why. Read the line, now the other eye; usual stuff. Then it was all reds and greens, before someone realised that the first tests hadn’t been done.

So I was whizzed off next door to test both my peripheral vision and my ability to click a button quickly. Good for the first and poor for the second. (Looks like I won't be joining the rebel army of the future, when the cyborgs take over - not unless they approach from the side.)

I also seemed to have a special head that the machine wouldn’t line up with properly. Unfortunately there was no wall with a giant head on it for that to be checked. Eventually we produced a couple of holiday snaps, one of each iris – a sort of ‘having a wonderful time, wish you were eye’.

Then it was quickly back next door, with me feeling a bit like a Crufts dog playing flyball.
“You will feel a slight puff of air," She said. "Just like this.”

And she proceeded to blow a whisper on my hand. Then they clamped me in and shot a bellows blast, right through my eye and into my skull cavity. By the third go, I’d reduced my leaps in the air from 8 feet down to about 2. And by the time we got to the left eye (which, incidentally, tests have shown is letting the side down a little), I was past caring.
“Blast that sucker.” I may have said.

Or more likely, thought it, while wincing. Still, it has taught me one way not to tease the cat any more.

There then followed a well-meaning but ultimately depressing lecture about how the lens of the eye becomes less flexible when you get old. I forgave her that as she was already wearing glasses herself.

In eye tests – and probably hearing tests too – we instinctively want to get a good result, not an accurate result. Even when I was trying out the comedy lenses and facial scaffolding, I was aware that part of me wanted to lie, just to get a clean sheet. Or maybe it would have looked just clean, close, up because I couldn’t read it clearly.

In the finish, I wound up with a prescription for 0.75 reading glasses, to help me read font size 5 close up without straining. And it turned out that the dry eyes I thought were glaucoma were actually down to the equivalent of eyelash dandruff! Probably weighing the buggers down. So I picked up some sterile wipes, said I’d think about the reading glasses and scuttled out of there.

My 30 minute appointment actually took an hour and five minutes but that may have been in the small print. And for all I know it could still be there.

A touch of class

I’m not sure exactly when it happened but somehow I’ve become middle class. At least, I think I have – it’s hard to tell these days.

I grew up in East London in a terraced house that had a toilet tacked on to the end of it. My parents were a milkman and a home help. I went to a local secondary school, left with few O levels and stayed on for a few weeks to study A levels. That is, until I got offered a job and needed to ‘pay my way’ at home.

I suppose the slide started when I was 22. After stints at a chemical manufacturers, as a milkman and then in the civil service (they really did take on anyone), I went to America for a year. It was only meant to be an 8 week trip, as far as my boss was concerned, but a car accident at week 6 gave me the opportunity I'd been looking for.

True, I’d held pretensions of writing a novel since I was 17, like many other disaffected adolescents. However, by the time I got back from New York, I had a rough draft of a very rough novel. And that’s not false modesty; I still have the original handwritten and typed versions.

Fast forward a lot of years and I’m a manager in a Telco, where I started out as a clerical officer. I’m living in Cornwall and posting this now as a distraction from the ongoing edit of a different novel. And that original manuscript? Well, it's much improved over the years, I hope. And a contract has been signed with a 2009 publication date looming. [You can read about it elsewhere in this blog.]

Now, my brother maintained that I had become middle class on the following charges:
1. Purchasing an Aga - guilty, using my partner’s redundancy payout.
2. Possessing a golden retriever - guilty, it was a second-hand one.
3. Driving a brand new car - guilty, but he paid for it after the family house was sold.
4. Reading the Guardian - guilty, once a week, on a Saturday.

I could ask to be taken into consideration: writing that second novel (available to all good literary agents and publishers, gag & sketch writing as a hobby and co-writing The Little Book of Cynics (plug, plug).

Evidence to the contrary is more circumstantial but I’d probably chalk up on the list:
1. Pro union and worker’s rights (I may not be a shop steward anymore but I still know the difference between socialism and socialising).
2. A lifelong and heartfelt love of swearing (thanks mum!) and not in any ironic way.
3. One business suit to my name. (And when it wears out, I’ll get another one, in the sales)
4. I eat in front of the TV. And not through a lack of furniture.
5. My idea of a good meal out is going down one of the local pubs.

I think, on balance, I’ve a foot in each camp. Whatever I am now, the roots of my upbringing run deep and rightly so. If a taxi driver can win Mastermind and a bus driver can be a successful novelist then surely I can knock up a story or two.

a lack of netiquette

Where would we be without the internet? Better off, some might say better.

- We wouldn't have bandwidth envy, silently seething while friends in the city brag about their fibre optic capacity.
- We wouldn't have the push-button insistence that our email (complete with smiley, naturally) was answered within a few minutes because, godammit, we know the person is online. We know that because they've just responded to our previous literary gem.
- We wouldn't have the craving neediness of social networking sites - to gather friends we'll never meet, exchange virtual presents we can never use and share cyber-kudos we only achieve through mutual back-scratching.
- We wouldn't have spamming, scamming, phishing, viruses and 'send this to 10 people and all your wishes will come true - it really works'. (Except when the wish is not to receive those emails anymore.)

Okay, you'll say, but the internet has democratised access to information. Well yes, and therein lies the problem. Celebrities and politicians have a habit of dying and resurrecting on wiki sites, like latter-day Dr Whos. Conspiracies abound on the net, fracturing the issues into opposing camps, without any resolution. Information is there in abundance but the facts may be hard to come by. According to the net, not only is Elvis alive, but he's still available for bookings.

Internet dating sites can be a licence to write fiction, but it's real people who can get hurt. The sense of immediacy can beguile people into mistaking it for intimacy. Of course you have so much in common, you optioned the same choices from the pull-down menu and selected one another on the basis of shared interests!

And for freelancers, there are other minuses. The information superhighway generates its own special kind of road-rage for us. If you sent a letter with an SAE, you might reasonably expect a response within a couple of weeks. But send a pitch email or even an electronic submission and you might end up waiting forever. It's virtual neglect.

Freelancers might be tempted to check out the many project and bid sites, especially the writers. If you do, you might not like what you see. A Walmart mentality is in vogue, with would-be employers posting ads declaring "$1 an article, 10 articles a week required. If you can't work for this amount, don't bother contacting me." And of course, there are people out across the globe, for whom $1 represents a reasonable return.

One thing's for certain, the internet and email are here to stay. Use with caution. They make wonderful servants but terrible masters, and rather ambiguous friends.