Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Blind - like Rutger Hauer

Although without the Ninja skills, admittedly.

I woke up this morning. This in itself is hardly worthy of note, it being not an unusual occurrence as I wake up most mornings. In fact the mornings that I generally put off waking up in - preferring instead to procrastinate with my eyes firmly shut and mouth gently oozing drool until the afternoon - have generally been the ones that I have been awake in for a reasonable period at the start of it. There has often been alcohol involved on these occasions, but that is hardly unusual either. Anyway, I digress.

Now there's a thing. What are the chances, eh?

Anyway (that sounds strangely familiar) I woke up this morning (oooh, so does that!), a bit groggy and not exactly with it - again not an unusual feeling. I looked across to the bedside table for my glasses, and saw that they weren't there. I started to grumble to myself along the lines of "Oh, for fucks sake. What the fuck did I do with those last night".

I have a filthy mouth, even when I am talking to myself.

Then it occurred to me. Slowly, admittedly. I saw that they weren't there. I didn't do the usual 'pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake' crap amongst the keys, watch, mobile and other assorted detritus that I usually have to search through to try and locate them every morning because they aren't sufficiently distinct against the red (seriously) wood of my bedside table. I'm not joking here, if I put my glasses down on a mottled surface (like a duvet, for instance) and don't pay attention where they fall, I have to run my hands across the bed to find them again unless the sun catches them. Let's not forget that I live in England, just to put that last statement into perspective. A dark and gloomy perspective with lots of rain, admittedly, but you get the point.

I don't know if I have mentioned this to my loyal readership (or to any of the other nosey tossers that happen upon here from time to time) but I have very bad eyesight. I wear contact lenses and have had, since being diagnosed at the age of 5, eyesight that has been classified - if I may use technical parlance for a moment - as 'shit'. Seriously. I make bats look like Hawkeye. Mr Magoo is at an optical level that I aspire to, possibly after about £30K's worth of laser surgery. This means that I am somewhat at the mercy of my surroundings until I have ocular correction to hand.

Now, it was as I was looking at the bedside table and being able to assess that my glasses were absent that it occurred to me (See how slow it was? It started occurring to me at the beginning of the paragraph before last...):

"This is probably bad"

Immediately after this, the devil dashed into my bedroom, grabbed me by what little remains of my hair and pulled my head back to tip a combination of acid, his piss, and sand that had been soaked in (dry) vinegar, into my eyes. He may even have let rip with a manic cackle not unlike glass breaking, but I am unsure as I was shouting "Gahhhh!!" and "Fuck!!!" at the time and may have drowned the twat out.

That's right, kids! Fuckwit boy had gone to sleep in his lenses!

Fuck, it was painful. I sat there for a few seconds frantically trying to pull my eyelid across my eyes with my fingers so that I could approximate a blink, but to no avail. I staggered into the bathroom to splash water onto my face and attempt to re-hydrate my eyes.

Ouch. With bells on.

I then had to spend 4 minutes alternately either trying to pull my eye out of the socket or swearing and kicking at the sink until - with a mighty pop - I got the lenses free. And I thought I was blind before...

I have no idea what happened. I wasn't drunk (surprisingly enough) the night before, and I have been wearing contacts for 14 years. I am, you would have to say, 'used' to the idea of taking them out at night. I just appear to have tootled off to bed and just gone to sleep being perfectly able to see. For the first time in my life. You'd think it would have been a sufficiently odd thing that my brain would have warned me that something was amiss, but it would appear not.

It was all a bit hairy this morning, mind. It took until about 9 o'clock for my eyes to focus properly, so driving for 20 minutes to be at work for 8 was more than a little, *ahem*, 'iffy'. I must have looked a right freak to the people going the other way:

"Did you see that, dear?"

"What's that?"

"That strange young (It's my fucking blog, I can lie) man driving the other way."

"No, what did he look like?"

"Fairly normal, if you discount the blood pouring from his eyes, the shouting and the frantic, strobe-like blinking"

"No, dear. I didn't see him".

"Oh, well. Where shall we take the dog for a walk tonight?"

posted by Brock @ Monday, May 23, 2005