You know that you must be old when your ophthalmic doctor smiles at you and says (in Spanish I might add) “You have the eyes of a forty-year-old!” - and you take it as a charming compliment!
This is all a function of the gauzy, torn fairy wing
that drifts across the sight in my left eye form time to time. On a regular basis. Not one to panic, I immediately assumed that
it was a fatal portent of some sort of disease that, almost as soon as it is
diagnosed, means death.
As it happened, the doctor was disturbingly soothing,
and took rather too many pains to emphasise just now normal and un-worrying
having floating wing tips in front of your eyes was. In the midst of this she also let slip that I
have “the very smallest” of cataracts, the very same cataracts, indeed, that
her eighty-two year old mother had and “nothing came of them”. I did notice the past tense in this
conversation but preferred to assume that it was a reference to the fugitive
cataracts rather than the state of her mother.
I now have two print outs from the retinal scan and
the ultrasound scan and have a printed reminded to go back to her in a
year. I always find it refreshing when
concern is 365 days away. I will now
assume that all is well with the world and that the wings will actually flutter
away “by themselves”. There is, after
all, no delusion like self-delusion - and having typed that, it doesn’t mean
that I will consider it as anything more than a play on words, and certainly
not something that deserves further investigation.
Which is more than I can say for the stubborn non-acceptance
of my perfectly good photograph of The Stain.
I really do refuse to be beaten and will take my steam camera (of happy
memory) with me on my next foray and take another snap.
And that will be on my old bike. The new (five levels of assistance) electric
bike is minus a brake. I have fancy disc
brakes, and the disc on the back wheel is what can only be described as
floppy. And application of the brake
makes no difference to the speed. Which
is disturbing.
I took the bike to the bike shop that I now use (based
on the expert, quick and cheap sorting out of the wobbly wheel on my other bike)
and expected the brake to be readjusted in a humiliatingly short time while I
looked on open mouthed with wonder at technical wizardry. No way!
I was told to leave the bike there as it would have to be de-assembled
and then re-assembled and he had a lot of work on hand.
As I had come by bike, assuming that five minutes and
a pitying look would just about wrap up the problem, I was faced with
another. If I left the bike there I
would have to walk back (No!) go by bus (No! No!) or take a taxi (No! No!
No!) So I thought that I would take
advantage of the bike’s ability to fold up and bring it to the shop by car.
I went home.
Eventually collapsed the bike, which is never as easy as they make it
appear in the little video on the website for the bike, and even more
eventually got it into the back of the car.
Once in Castelldefels town, I took the bike out of the
car, un-collapsed it, which is never as easy as they make it appear in the
little video on the website for the bike, and rode it triumphantly the few
blocks to the shop. Where it has been
left to get better.
I returned home via the swimming pool; did my metric
mile; drank my tea; wrote my notes and got home to find Toni in a state of decision
about the bedroom.
As we live near the sea there is always a tendency for
damp to occur, and the ceiling near the tall window doors in the bedroom is a
prime growing spot. We have anti-mould
paint and that, I was told, was going to be applied as it was obviously a
contributory factor in Toni’s on-going bad throat scenario.
Luckily I had the ophthalmic doctor’s (is that tautology?)
appointment and so, as is always the best with partners, one could get on
without the ‘help’ of the other.
To get to my appointment I went on my old bike. As I have ruthlessly ignored the machine that
I previously regarded as the Bentley of Bikes, I sprayed oil indiscriminatingly
in all mechanical directions in the hope that some of them would prevent
screeching metal fatigue on my journey.
I had been using my ‘old’ bike for years and, possibly
because of the strange upside-down ‘S’ shape as the main bit holding the wheels
together, I can’t ride it hands free - but I do find it comfortable. Imagine my horror as I mounted the thing for
the first time for weeks and found it entirely foreign and strange.
My posture was different, the handlebars were a
different height, and my centre of gravity had been displaced. I felt as if I had never been on the bike
before!
Within a few hundred yards, the sense of otherness
between the bike and me had gone and I was back where I used to be. I have never gone from foreign to native in
such a short period of time. Though I
wonder about how I am going to adapt to the return of the other bike
tomorrow. Perhaps I might beat my own
new assimilation record.
And it was hard work.
I now see that I have become well used to the judicious touch on the
little throttle handle for a small but welcome boost in circumstances when
brute foot power would have needed to have been applied. Slight gradients became irritating and the
wind took back its vindictive quality. I
have been vitiated by the cloying and debauched pleasures of Five Levels of
Assistance - which sounds like a good title for a book.
