The truth, the whole truth and anything but...

Ha Ha!  It looks like I can dictate to this damn machine!  Well that’s gonna make entry into the blog a lot easier whilst I’ve got this gammy eye...

Last week I went back to the eye clinic for a checkup.  Now for the previous three weeks I’ve been suffering with a scratchy and very watery eye. You know, like you’ve got an eyelash permanently stuck somewhere in the soft sensitive bits.  No, not there.  

A couple of days beforehand I decided to have a really careful look to see if I could identify the cause.  With my nose pressed up hard against a magnifying mirror I didn't really find anything apart from perhaps a little bit of dried on scum. But wait a minute... whats that?  A raised lump on the front of my eye? And something black going into it?  Hmmmm..

The Eye Clinic was ultra full so I had a long long wait.  My initial eyesight check confirmed that I couldn’t see anything 'cept for the silver wobbly jelly like, er, jelly that's swishing about in my eye.  But it’s improving with a little peripheral vision appearing and my eye-pressure tests post the steroid tablets and drops were spot-on.  Which by the way caused my glands, especially my boys, to swell up immensely!  Wow that was more than a handful putting them to bed every night.  Thank God I'm not cycling, just yet.  

I'm invited into the consultants office.  'Ciao', says I in my bestest mangled Italiano accent.  I told her about my scratchy bits, no not them, so as well as having a particularly close look at the back of my eye, which apparently has healed fine, she then prepped the front with even more stingy nasty drops to have a close look.  

'Aha! Mista Tyssen', she says, 'won of ze steeeches ave, ow you say, not come out'.  

Ok so this is now up close and personal.  Her head is pressed close to mine only separated by an ultra expensive microscope as she tried first with a pair of forceps to take the stitch out.  Nah, it's embedded.  A couple more extra stingy drops went to my eye to numb the sucker and away she went to collect the other toolbox.  Now a fat bloke I am and staying still with a belly in between me and an ultra expensive flange caused me to crank my neck hard back as I pressed my chin deep into its gusset and my forehead into the technicalities.  Phwoar!  I thought I was back in Bradford!

She reached in for the second time.  Oh God! The feeling as she cut the eyeball with the scalpel was like having a rather tight elastic band wrapped around my klootzaks (ahem, I assume) just before cutting the feckers off.   If I could’ve, I would’ve melted into the floor.  That was just not possible with my chin ever so slightly hovering above her gusset and every sinew in my body pleading with me to back away.  How I managed to stay still I don't know other than the thought of the damage that could be done by a scalpel so close to my balls.  More dangerous than fighting in Bakhmut I reckon.  

She went in with the forceps and bingo!, out it came.  Must remember to check my flies next time before going into her office.  Tears streamed down my face as Niagara falls might on a particularly wet day.  She smiles, nay laughs at the big baby opposite and says she'd like to see me again in 2 weeks. 

I’m back on the antibiotic creams, eyedrops and sofa again.  Just for the fun of it I strain my eyeballs in a way you wouldn't a teabag trying to watch the 9th of May parade in Moscow on a Sky 'live' feed.  All in Russian of course.  I turn on the closed captions to help me understand what is going on.  And fell off the sofa laughing!

Well, a Russian translation it was not.  Simply, whatever the mechanism was, it tried its best to attach the nearest English word to what was said.  With weeping eyes I watched Poo Tin rip with his lies into the western world but read on the bottom of the screen phrases like '... the great American Goldilocks has rummaged in my basement knickers...' and 'yesterday the crows did upend her cha cha with rockets for parties'.  Or something similar.  Hilarious!  And it made absolute sense! 

Finally, for the first time in over four weeks I took the magnetic trainer out of the garage. I cycled on its lowest setting for about 20 minutes before my thighs gave up.  

This is a very bad sign.  Four weeks of lozzaking around surfing a sofa keeping the gas bubble in the right place in my eye has mortally wounded my legs.  So I've sent them to A&E but am not expecting anything back anytime soon.  My boys had got used to swinging in their hammocks.  They screamed out aloud when my bicycle seat appeared from the darkened depths beneath them like a hungry Great White just before being shoved into their unkempt garden.  Nonetheless, not all is bad.  The bubble means that I can currently put a shelf up dead level :-)

It’s now early May in a late kinda way for the tour cycling not to have commenced.  I still have approx 50% of my eyeball full of gas and so am blind sided to the right with jellyfied fuzzy vision to the lower front as a result of all of the internal reflections [I think].  I am NOT driving nor cycling on the road, any road, until I get good peripheral vision back. 

Nonetheless, I'm still chuckling to myself having just watched the whole of the Russian 9th of May military non-truth fest.

But don't fret, Wayne.  Everything has a silver lining.  

Including your eye :-)

Ciao for now..