My choice of food for the birthday meal in the chosen restaurant was a ‘bocadillo classico’ of chorizo, morcilla (black pudding sausage) and cheese. And it was tastily spicy, though a little dry, so I added mayonnaise. The restaurant owner was delighted that I chose something so traditional and everyone else was horrified that I had chosen something so laden with cholesterol! I have to admit, in spite of the hypocrisy of people questioning my choice while themselves have fatty alternatives, the roll was one of the tastiest that I have had for years.
The delightfully indulgent theme was continued in the birthday cake that was a chocolate sponge with orange mousse cream, coated in chocolate with the topping of fresh fruit. Utterly delicious! The only restraint I showed was in my non-alcoholic beer – and that was purely on medical advice, and not, I hasten to add, in any way my free choice!
The curfew has now ended, but we did not come back to Castelldefels much later than usual and, as I am now used to going to bed hours earlier than I used to, I was tired when we got home and soon went to bed.
There, the foregoing shows that I am capable of writing about something other than Covid and politics, though you will notice that the ‘curfew’ did manage to make an appearance.
Part of the fall-out from Toni’s birthday concerns his presents. I bought him a pair of wireless ear buds to listen to the radio on his phone when he goes for his daily walk but you will be astonished to hear, they have not paired easily with the phone.
I have yet to get a pair of wireless ear buds that have paired in the ‘automatic’ way that they should. Much the same goes for smart watches seamlessly pairing with smartphones – ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, rather than anything remotely related to reality. However, perseverance and a few fugitive tears usually manage to get the necessary results.
As Toni is of the “why do I need the instructions?” generation, he is usually more intuitively sensitive to the petulant demands of electronic equipment than I, but at present he is claiming major mechanical failure to explain his almost complete lack of success in getting the ear buds to work. I say ‘almost’ because he has got the ear buds to work, but not both at the same time. The buds have not spoken or paired with each other – and I have nothing to suggest to resolve the situation. Eventually, Toni will work out some sort of resolution, but at the moment he is frustrated and generally dismissive of the whole affair. But it will nag at his technical reputation and he will get them working. Probably.
The weather recently has not been wonderful; indeed the weather has not been sunnily acceptable for months. I endured a lacklustre April on the assurance (an explicit assurance by Toni) that the misery of dull days would give way to a brilliantly sun-lit May. And that has signally not happened.
And has still not happened and this is now some days later. Although it is not raining, it has been trying hard to do so and generally unsettling the sunshine that should be pouring down on us. But I have faith that the good sunny days are but days away.
I hate, have hated, and will always hate the wearing of glasses. They put pressure in all the wrong facial places and steam up and slip and are generally hateful. Since I was eighteen I have worn contact lenses, and, as I started wearing them in the hard-plastic era then those of my generation will know that the discomfort of glasses is as nothing to a speck of dust getting behind a lens.
As I do a lot of reading and typing, it is generally better for me to wear neither glasses nor contact lenses for the best reading experience. Typing is a little more difficult, but on the computer it is easy to increase the size of the type to accommodate my poor sight and then reduce it to normal size when printing.
However, from time to time I get fed up with lenses and revert to glasses in spite of my antipathy, and for the last number of months I have worn my glasses.
I had to visit the optician because of the ill fit of the glasses – to be absolutely fair, this was probably because I have left them on my leg (!) while reading and it is inevitable that some pressure damage will result from complete lack of care.
Although my optician does such running repairs for nothing, he was obviously missing my injection of cash that the wearing of daily contact lenses brought him from me on a regular basis. In a discussion about why I wasn’t wearing my lenses, I pointed out that I need varifocal lenses in my glasses to cope with my long and short sightedness. He was not fazed and said that a new type of varifocal lens was available if I would care to try it. Never one to reject the spending of money (free trial is never really ‘free’, even I know that) I agreed to give them a go.
Now, I did go through a period when my optician in Cardiff tried to change my lenses to something more suited to my variable sight.
One of the failed experiments was to make each of my eyes do a different job: the left was for reading and the right was for distance. Or possibly the other way around. Whatever. I was told that my brain would sort out the conflicting information and would ‘choose’ the appropriate eye for the task. It didn’t.
I also had a bi-focal lens to try too. That failed entirely as I couldn’t see well at distances and reading was a total disaster.
So, my agreement to try the lenses has failure built into the experience. To make matters much, much worse, the lenses were monthly wear rather than the daily wear that I had become used to.
I have to admit that I never, truly, looked after my lenses properly, so a daily lens that you could insert in the morning and throw away at night seemed ideal for me, and they were soft and easy on the eye too.
It has only been a few days with the new lenses and I have to admit that I am impressed. So far. I have not seen a lens through its life yet, so judgement must be reserved, but they are comfortable and although my sight is not perfect, it does allow me to read, type and see with some clarity.
People with poor eyesight are prepared to put up with a lot. You only have to look at the outer surface of a confirmed glasses wearer and note the number of smears, splodges and specks of dirt to be impressed by how many obstructions to clear sight we are able to take in our stride.
The privations of contact lens wearers are usually epic. A contact lens wearer will have harrowing stories of pain, loss and miracle that will make non-contact lens wearers doubt their probity, but all those stories are true! We wear our tales as badges of endurance under tiny bits of plastic!
It is far too soon to accept these new lenses as anything other than a promising experiment, but it is only when you have experienced the gradual increasing loss of sight through the years, that you will be able to understand the amount of blind (ha!) faith that lens wearers put in each innovation to make their sight sharper.
My optician assures me that I am now wearing the very latest technology and that the improvements of the lenses from similar ones of only a year ago are remarkable. Who am I to say? But I hope he’s right and I further hope that the continuing streams of money that I pay will be justified in clear sight.
One side effect of not wearing glasses means that I can wear other glasses. This is to do with my bike riding.
Unprotected eyes, even at my gentle speeds, means that all sorts of detritus come smashing onto the eyeball. Wearing glasses acts as a shield for the various irritations, especially tiny insects, that generally interfere with smooth riding. So bike glasses were needed. Which I have. Somewhere.
The Royal Hunt of the Eye Protectors eventually unearthed (not literally) some goggles that I had bought on Kickstarter. The USB of these was they had a Bluetooth connection to my mobile phone and used bone conduction behind the ear to allow sound to come through, but still allowing ambient sounds to flow into unobstructed ears. As far as my understanding of the traffic rules is concerned, in-ear buds are banned when you are cycling, but bone conduction variants are possibly allowed. Certainly. I think.
I have used them once and listened to a fairly hard-hitting interview on the Today Programme (Radio 4) with a British Conservative minister trying to justify the absurd illogicality of the Covid rules regarding a worrying outbreak of the Indian Variant of Covid and allowing a crowd into a football stadium. An embarrassing melange of words from the hapless minister did not hide the paucity of thought behind the non-policy of criminally culpable Conservatives. So the glasses worked. Frighteningly well.
The battery life on the glasses is allegedly 6 hours, and other reviews have said that they hold their charge well.
The only down side was the necessity of changing the visor from a muddy brown to a professional looking blue. It was not a task that we (it took two of us) will repeat: the visor that is there now stays there. For ever. And I am inclined to write a scathing comment on the YouTube film of one reviewer who said, “Changing the lens is easy” and then DID NOT DEMONSTRATE how to do it, merely giving a vague indication of “pinching here and the lens will pop out” – lies and deceit! However it is done and it adds a touch of professionalism to my altogether sit-up-and-beg style of stolid cycling.
Talking of which, where is my new bike?
I had been warned that its delivery would take about 32 working days (an oddly specific number) but the bike seems to be stubbornly stuck in Poland after having been sent by train (is that likely?) from Hong Kong. It is now getting to the stage of contacting my contact in the company and asking plaintive questions.
Oddly enough, the reason for purchasing the new bike has become less moot. I was having difficulty in dismounting from the vehicle and decided that I needed a ‘walk through’ version to accommodate my lessening agility. However, I have developed ways of getting on and off the bike that suit my needs. Furtherly however, I think that the new bike will be short-term-future-proofed. Or that is what I am telling myself to justify the expense. As the money has already been paid, it is just a matter of wanting to get my hands on what is mine already.
I will try the web site again and perhaps things (including my bike) will have moved on.
I live in hope!
