Childish tricks during endless trips for eyes
FROM about eight years of age, when I was boss-eyed, I went up to London, on the train, from suburban Hampton (not far from the Palace) to the main Waterloo railway station, twice a week for about three years.
My Mum took me; I was never brave enough to go on my own. The London Refraction Hospital was my reason for going, hoping that one of their smart eye people would be able to sort out my eyes. They never really did but I learned a lot about the Elephant and Castle area of the city and even more about waiting for trains.
I learned that four and 34 minutes past the hour meant two trains per hour from Hampton, 30 minutes each way starting at about those times from the local railway station. It was every day, unless it was too foggy or the train driver was taking a sicky. He never did; few people ever took sickies during those early post-war years!
I am still a bit boss-eyed but it is now getting rather too late in my life to worry over-much about it. Besides which, I have always enjoyed having a conversation with two people and learning to cope with the contributions made by the one I was never actually talking with….. Great fun!
I also still remember playing childish tricks during those endless visits to the Eye Hospital.
I realised, apparently long before the eye specialists, that being bosseyed was a fundamental part of being me.
It was not going to be altered by doing soppy eye exercises specified by white-coated youngish doctors, entirely reasonably bored out of their minds by having to deal with sceptics hot off the tube train and desperate to get home for their tea.
My specialist trick was to decide whether, on this particular Elephant and Castle-ism, I would deliberately give wrong answers to well-meaning questions about whether “a” lay to the
‘‘ PEOPLE WERE GENERALLY AMUSED BY THE FACT THAT I OCCASIONALLY LOOKED TO THE BOWLER AT THE WRONG END BUT, HEY-HO, SO WHAT ...
left of “b” or vice versa.
I could rarely see both “a” and “b” at the same time anyway, so I just made up the answer, looked innocently at the specialist and even occasionally asked him what was his view of the problem. Unsurprisingly, my answers were never consistent with giving a straight answer (or a dramatically boss-eyed reply).
After two or three years of this pantomime, and being far from enamoured by walking in the Elephant and Castle after a long journey on the Tube, we decided to give it all away.
We were in favour of less train travel, more football and a determination not to be concerned with how daft it looked when I was tired.
I still get the occasional “Look me straight in the eye and tell me that you love me” kind of comment but I can live with that as long as the right person is saying it…….
Spectacles are funny things and, for me anyway, rarely more than a slight inconvenience.
I take them off when I’m swimming. I long ago learned to ignore students who insisted on answering my well-meaning questions about this, that or the other when they were intended for somebody else who just happened to be enjoying a nearby beer down the shallow end.
A whole life-time ago I managed to maintain sufficient sight to play pretty good football, leaving the specs in the dressing room, and relying on a teammate to find them for me after the final whistle.
I played club cricket tolerably well but I never scored many runs anyway so nobody noticed I had taken my glasses off before the first ball had been bowled.
People were generally amused by the fact that I occasionally looked to the bowler at the wrong end but, heyho, so what……?