Well, that’s that over for a year.  Ever since optometrists started routinely measuring intra-ocular pressure, my readings have been at the high end of normal.  The NHS adjusted the thresholds downwards a year or so ago, so the first time I got an old geezer’s free eye examination (which I was already paying for under the insurance scheme – but that’s another story…), the optometrist referred me.  The NHS being what it is these days, the good news is that I got the choice of going to hospital and sitting around amid scores of sick people waiting to be seen, or seeing, for example, the optometrist at the shop I used to go to till the previous incumbent retired.  Thus I’m seen as soon as I arrive (early) and am out inside half an hour.  The intervals between examinations have stretched from the initial three months to twelve, and this time, since pressure and field results were better than last time, I didn’t have to have those horrible belladonna-based drops that send my irises running for cover.  What a fuss I make!  But then, I am a bloke, after all.

It is raining vigorously.  The fellow across the road seems to be building a boat in the garden, and his wife is rounding up animals in pairs.  Our visiting ducks seem happy to have a greater area and depth of pond to play in, and continue to eat us out of house and home.  But the grass will be knee-deep before I can get out there and cut it without sinking into the swamp.