The eyes have it…

CHRIS BENNETT finds that having your eyes done is not as bad as having your teeth done. Well, not quite.

OPTOMETRISTS are often very interesting people. They see a lot. On the face of it that may not seem very remarkable, but it is.

I visit my optometrist, with whom I have been a patient (if that is the word), for eight years, about once in two years. This time I had left it a little late, but then visiting the optometrist is about two rungs down the nervous scale from visiting the dentist.

Her rooms, surgery or maybe chambers, a word dripping with ominous implications, are bright and cheerful, and housed inside the warmth and comfort of the Shelly Centre. The inner room is also bright. In one corner sits the chair, brooding, like a spider waiting to pounce. Sundry large pieces of what appear to be modern interpretations of medieval equipment also lurk in the shadows.

Of course all this is in my head, but unfortunately so is everything else so that knowledge doesn’t help a bit.

The processes which are to determine the condition of my ageing eyes are thorough and delicately laced with a hint of menace.

Again, it’s in my head. I am fortunate in having good eyesight, and even more so in having someone to confirm that.

A number of other devices are used to test the resilience or otherwise of the windows to my soul. I see them as inventions of the Inquisition, but again I am wrong; aren’t I?

There is a quaint contraption that requires the victim to balance his chin on a sort of cradle; after a few reassuring words a short jet of air hits the eyeball with unnerving accuracy. And, of course, there are two eyes; so twice the unnerving.

And then there is the pièce de résistance. This contrivance of modern technology tells the optometrist a great deal. It, I think, photographs the eye; with a flash, in a flash. It is a bit like watching one those experiments men used to carry out on Christmas Island, an unfortunately named atoll in the Pacific.

I was able to describe the kaleidoscope of colours that I saw after this event (not Christmas Island) which told my friend Nataschka even more than she already knew of my eyes and their ways.

She pointed out that stress can affect the eyesight. Of that I have no doubt.

After all my misplaced nervousness I came away with a feeling of well-being, that all is as well with my precious sight as may be expected at this stage of my life.

One of the things I enjoy discussing with Nataschka is my colour blindness. She is not even remotely troubled by it because she understands the condition so thoroughly. The only other person with whom I can discuss this beautiful world with is my brother, Richard. We have identical colour vision.

And of course, when we are together the rest of the world is colour blind.

I was rather pleased, while watching a gorgeous gaggle of green pigeons, clowning around and falling about like parrots in my neighbour’s fig tree (their Afrikaans name is papagaaiduif), to see in Roberts Birds that the green pigeons are often seen as yellow or gold. I am glad to say that they look splendidly golden to me.

As I am so often waffling on about the importance of reading, I should add to it that the importance of having your eyes checked regularly cannot be over emphasised.