Blind Summit.

I'm buying new glasses. Reading glasses, because I'm old and infirm. I could never see far but now I can't see near either. Now I have no defences against my natural predators and you will find my eviscerated torso dripping from a bus shelter, my blue lips frozen into a pout as I ask "Who's that?" of eternity. That's how I see it happening: urban lions. Not even bothering to sneak up and not even an aggressive female trying to feed her young. One of those doughy, dozy Aslan-looking fuckers that never get off their arses on the Serengeti.

The long and the short of it

Urban lions: my old nemeses. Well no more. I have outside glasses for seeing things far away, so now I'm getting indoor glasses for seeing things that aren't far away. I can no longer be surprised by a suave urban lion confronting me in the drawing room. And helping himself to my brandy too, the clawed prick. 

I can still see for about four feet between my two fuzzy areas* - the sweet, sharp spot - but I expect I shall one day need a third pair of glass for that too. 

I walk to the optician which is about two miles away. I haven't been on public transport for nine months and have trained myself to walk longish distances. The four mile round trip is nothing these days. As I wander through Ballyhackamore (I live in Ireland, you know) I see the cafes are open again and full of people not wearing masks or social distancing. This is why I haven't been on public transport for nine months - the public are a fucking liability. I may have to go on the train to Coleraine on business next week and I shall be dressed like Claude Raines in The Invisible Man for the journey. 

All the walking has made me slightly fitter (and a bit less fat) so I no longer sweat as I stride about in my powder blue desert boots. I feel pretty good. My gammy leg has been well exercised and feels strong. There is a faint mizzle on the breeze today but as I'm wearing contact lenses I don't care. My favourite weather features strong winds and light rain - it makes me feel Romantic with a capital R. I may break out the quill and parchment and write an ode on something, probably the parchment as it's handy. 

I do start to sweat when I stop walking, however. Especially in a super-heated shopping centre. I arrive at the optician and my brow's sopping. "Can I help you, mate?" says the friendly man on the door. "I have an appointment to look at some glasses," I say. "Come to the right place then, haven't you?" He laughs uproariously and looks like he's about to slap me on the back, but thinks better of it because of Covid restrictions. Instead he sends me to queue on the opposite side of the table to the one I've been queuing. That's where the "known" customers are, though there are no customers either side of the table. 

My eye-sight is quite bad so I priced the lenses on the website before I got to the shop. I realised I didn't want expensive frames. Expensive glasses frames are uniformly awful anyway and I've always favoured the heavy, utilitarian look of National Health eye-wear and the opticians do a cheapo range of twenty quid frames that have a look of classic NHS specs, though they weigh a lot less. 

A woman greets me and we go in to look at glasses. She directs me to the mid-priced section. "Have you had a chance to look at the range?" "I have," I say, "I was advised by the person I spoke to on the phone to look on-line and I think I've already decided." I walk her over to the cheapo section. She looks me up and down. I'm wearing powder blue Red or Dead desert boots, a Sainsbury's slim fit jean (get the look, kids) and a raincoat I bought in Muji on Oxford Street nearly twenty years ago. It has frayed cuffs and a button missing and is a bit on the shiny side. 

 "Erm, are you paying for these yourself?" the assistant mumbles, "or do you have a voucher or something?" "No, I'm paying, I think." "Maybe, the government..." "No. Just me."

She looks me up and down again. I'm still sweating and I'm wearing a bin-bag. She goes over to look at the price of my lenses with my shitty frames. 

I try on the glasses. They look great. I look like a bonsai Ronnie Kray, which is the desired look. 

"We have to clean the ones you touch," she says appearing over my shoulder. "I only touched these," I say, "and these are the ones I want." I hand them to her and we go to a desk that has been bisected by a perspex screen. Next to us is a Northern Irish man who thinks he's funny.    

From this point forth the conversation is undertaken in mime as there is no louder noise in the world than a Northern Irish man who thinks he's funny. Sperm Whales complain that they can't hear themselves think when a Northern Irish man who thinks he's mad craic altogether is entertaining. The material wasn't that fresh: one of the shop assistants started humming a song. "DON'T GIVE UP THE DAY JOB," says the man, cracking up at his own brilliance. The young assistant helping him is gamely laughing along with him. "I CAN'T SEE SHITE!" bellows the man, "I'M BLIND AS A POST. NO, THAT'S DEAF. I DON'T KNOW IF I'M COMING OR GOING NOW! TAKE ME AWAY! LOCK ME UP!" He dissolves into guffaws again in the manner of Krakatoa burping the alphabet. 

Meanwhile I'm struggling with negotiations. I've wiped my forehead and taken my jacket off. I'm wearing a black shirt with a repeating bird motif, so she knows I'm a quality guy who can afford to pay for his cheapo glasses unassisted, and who is picking the cheapest frames in the shop for purely aesthetic reasons. Which is sort of true. But she doesn't look convinced and she continues to mumble at me from behind her mask. Its hard to work out if she's talking about the right prescription as she refuses to use the terminology "reading glasses". She breaks off to confer with a colleague about something. The fun man is telling anyone who'll listen that he's blind as a bat. "CAN'T SEE MY HAND IN FRONT OF MY FACE," he says, putting his hand in front of his face and feigning shock at the hand. "AAGH! LOOKS LIKE I CAN SEE IT. HA HA HA!" Everyone loves him. 

She returns and starts typing without looking up. The customer service can go either way in this place. Often they're really good. Today's an off day. She seems to have taken against me. 

Finally, I don't care. I've reached the point in my life where I don't have to seek approval from absolutely everybody. I can miss one. I can specifically miss this one.  I become decorously polite. I am always polite but now I'm relentlessly polite, smiling behind my mask. My pleasantries are almost as loud as the funny man. She's taken aback and the rest of the transaction takes place on auto-pilot as she struggles to work out why I'm being so nice. 

I pick up the glasses in a week and it constitutes another reason to leave the house. I'm already planning my outfit. 

*of vision. I have no wish to see the fuzzy areas on my person.