Now That's A Sight For Sore Eyes

I got up one morning recently with something in my eye. At first It was an interference against the folds of the curtains, and although I couldn't feel anything, I tried vainly washing my eye with cold water.

There were more floaters than usual, and when later that day my wife was parking the car, I was convinced someone was playing with a torch in the back - turning it off and on. I waited for my wife to say something to the girls about flashing torches when mummy's trying to park. She didn't.

I look at the world through a net curtain and a leafy houseplant. Some of the dots I can almost focus on. What do you call a floater that doesn't float, but hangs there swaying in the eddies and tides of the aqueous humor? Eventually I called the hospital.

I've been through this before: Sit here, look up, this will sting, put your chin here, look here there and everywhere but concentrate on this earlobe. Multi coloured lamps, lenses, strange devices of uncertain origin all brought to inspect my forcibly dilated eyes. Sometimes for a moment my retina floats into view, a maze of rivers streams and tributaries strewn across the arid desert plains.

"Has there been any trauma or fall? Sneezing or coughing fits? A fight?" Alas, no.

Somehow in my sleep I have managed to tear my retina. Something went pop. "We will need to seal around the tear with laser treatment to ensure it gets no worse. There is nothing to worry about."

Ah, Doctors. There is never anything to worry about. And it could be worse.

Because it's affecting my right eye. The one damaged previously by a series of dendritic ulcers on the cornea a few years ago. The one with double vision all by itself and an interesting game it can play with street lights.

"Have you ever suffered from cold sores?" was the question then, with the same answer.

I'd give my right eye for a decent right eye.

More On Reading List

I'm adding more detail to my reading list:

(c) - I have completed the book - a cause for celebration still

(2) - A book I have previously failed to finish, but am trying again

(r) - I have read this book before (perhaps more than once)

(f) - I've given up

Reading List Continuations

Since my last post, I have now added Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop. I have loved Carter's writing for many years, but have failed at least three times to finish this one - probably because I had just seen the film, or still had memories of it. A new volume was recently published (one in a series of 10) to celebrate Virago Modern Classics' 30 years which I bought for myself as a birthday present. Beautiful, though Nights at the Circus is still my faviurite.

I must re-read The Passion of New Eve.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx was next. One of those books you try to read slowly because you don't want it to end. One of those books where a character will say tell you there life story rather than just say hello or 'I'm fine, how are you'. One of those books you really wish had never been filmed.

I've mostly stopped watching adaptations - films or TV - as I always wonder what compromises had to be made to squeeze into the smaller medium and The Shipping News was badly squeezed. Thankfully I had left it a couple of years after seing the film before reading the book. I have vague memories of Judi Dench and Kevin Spacey, anyone else is a blur.

Next was a failure, purely because I couldn't be bothered. The Unfortunates by Laurie Graham. I got to page forty something, read a short story by Annie Proulx (The Sagebrush Kid) which blew away the rapidly-spun cobwebs of enui I was accumulating - and wondered at the sense of carrying on when I had better books in my to-read pile deserving of my attention.

Onwards and upwards. If you look to the right, you will see my current book - contrast and compare! One of the first proper books I ever read was a collection of Greek legends and I fell in love very heavily. I have always intended to read Homer, but somehow never got round to it. So here we are. And yes, The Iliad will be read soon.

As I read, titles will be added to the pile on the right - successes and failures. I may even work up a review or two as I go along. Who cares if no-one comes here to read them, right?

Who cares!

Reading List

It's taken me a couple of years to get back in the habit of reading. Ever since I stopped the daily commute to work, I've found it difficult to set aside time for the luxury of fiction. Oh, there have been the odd exceptions: a Gaiman, Pratchett or Pullman. But no sustained book-after-book reading. No 700-page+ bury yourself and come up for air works.

Hour-long train journeys (well, 75-minutes plus delays, cancellations, engineering works and bomb alerts) meant I always carried at least one if not two books with me.

Since then, very little. I start a book, leave it for a while, fail to get back into it and give up.

I can't say it was a New Year Resolution (another subject for another post), but this year I have made a special, sustained effort and it seems to be working.

This is the list of books I have read. Apart from first and last, they are in no particular order - except I think the quality of the first helped as a springboard to the second, and so on it went. And I'm not boasting - no-one reads this rubbish, so who would listen to my boasts? This is just a list of very good books I happen to have read.

So, this year I have been mostly reading:

• Halting State by Charles Stross
• Odd And The Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
• Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Trans. by Simon Armitage
• The Night Watch by Sarah Walters
• The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Notes From An Exhibition by Patrick Gale
• Once Upon A Time In The North by Philip Pullman
• Hogarth by Jenny Uglow

There were two failures:

• The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
• The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie

Perhaps I was being a little ambitious, but I will read both again.

And so - as night follows day and politicians follow sporting success - now that I'm reading regularly, the urge to write catches flame within me, and my demons come to snuff that flame out again.

To arms!

It's That Time of Year Again

It's summer.

The sunlight is filtered through blossom-clad trees, falling upon a young woman walking an otherwise deserted street on her way to meet her boyfriend. She wears a floaty, flowery dress and a smile of anticipation.

Suddenly, a gust of wind carries 'stuff' into the air. She stops, her face screws itself up in anguish as she--

*tch*

Oh No! She suffers with Hay Fever! Her day is about to be ruined - call the army!

Who - purely by chance, naturally - happen to be hiding behind hedges and low walls as they have been watching and following her just in case this situation should arise. They leap to her defense...


Except it isn't really like that, is it? That 'stuff' wasn't pollen ,as pollen is invisible. It was most probably seeds and butterfly wings. Stuff. And if I just went *tch* I wouldn't have to carry several hankies. My experience of seasonal allergic rhinitis is somewhat different:

• Swollen, red itchy-to-the-point-of-painful watery eyes
• Sneezing so much I turn into a sodden mess of hankies, tissues, shirt
• The inability to get fresh air into my lungs because of asthma - usually late in the evening
• The all-pervading, bone-aching weariness that won't go away

I'm on 2 kinds of medication and an inhaler. Lime trees are my enemy. Why couldn't it have been Dutch Lime disease back in the seventies?

June and July, you can set your calendar by me. June and July. Juno and Julius Caesar. I count the sneezes til the month of Augustus. Joon and Julie, Julian Joon. When I am a published author - one day - I'll write a novel: The Unpleasant Profession of Julian Joon. I shall make his life miserable - Job will feel himself blessed. My revenge will be long, sweet and lime-scented.