Replete with last week's bout of TCOB ('Taking Care Of Business', one of 'the King's' favourite sayings, (although I'm not sure what the Queen Mother would have had to say about it), I decided it was time to stop avoiding the inevitable and I took myself off to the optician's yesterday...
My optician has recently moved his business from a very bijou (and no doubt hideously expensive, rates-wise) part of town, to an area not five minutes' drive from the town centre (a twenty minute walk), but in a low-down, depressed and deprived city suburb where I stand out like a sore thumb because I'm not clad in rags and look far from undernourished...
His high standards have not changed. I was offered a lovely cup of frothy coffee with cream from a brand-spanking-new machine by an exhuberant member of his staff, while I perused the bling-encrusted racks of attractive Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior and Bvlugari geps. (CLICK FOR NORTHUMBRIAN LANGUAGE TRANSLATION)
I rested my hefty haunches on his black and chrome leather sofas, picking up a copy of Vanity Fair with an article about Johnny Depp to squint at, given that I was only able to wear my old Prada geps (Prescription Vintage 2008) in readiness for the full plethora of sight tests.
...Normally, I go nowhere without my daily contact lenses held in to my tenderly glistening mince-pies with the vice-like grip of me eye-lids!
I passed the gruelling tests. Which is amazing as I'm usually to be found ruminating on something like a previously undetected detached retina or a painful dose of glaucoma which my late Mutti suffered with...
'Go home and celebrate your healthy eyes!', began my bespectacled optometrist.
What with, gin?! Fireworks?
He continued, 'Your contact lens prescription hasn't altered at all, which is good but you will need to change the prescription in your
Great, I thought, I am turning into Miss Marple.
Afterwards, I sat before the bright, bespectacled receptionist (WHY DOES NO-ONE WHO WORKS IN AN OPTICIAN'S WEAR CONTACT LENSES??!).
She beamed as she withdrew a tiny calculator from within her voluminous black cape - just on trend for Hallowe'en! She calculated away, her fingers tippy-tappying across the keys...
"You are entitled to a reduction as the Government does pay for a percentage of your lenses, given that you are
But, never look a gift horse in the mouth, as my Grandmother would say...
And, as the pretty receptionist's black manicured fingers glided over the keys of the calculator, the damage emerged for the cost of fitting new lenses into my old, but good, glasses. I had decided to be parsimonious, given my circumstances, and eschewed the shiny and new.
"That'll be £185.51p, please! How would you like to pay?"
"Er, not at all," I said, somewhat unhelpfully...
