in regione caecorum rex est luscus

When I bought the house we currently live in, it had been extended at the back (kitchen) and side (garage with extra bedroom above) in the typical way that 3-bed 1930's semis are. There are two more on our road - attached to each other as it happens - currently undergoing the same process.

Because we are at the end of a cul-de-sac, the shape of the plot the house is like a piece of Trivial Pursuit "pie". The angle that the house is at relative to the angle of the shared fence with our neighbours, is such that I doubt I could have ever actually got my car in through the door. if it got it in, it could well have stayed there.

As it happens the garage was always full of "overflow" from the house, so in about 2007 I asked a local builder to take out the garage doors and convert it into an office and a utility room with downstairs loo. He did a great job and the office is where Gel and I conduct our work and play. 

When I moved from being an Operator to being a Trainee Programmer at TSB in the early 1980's I had to take some 'aptitude' tests. Turns out my spatial reasoning is pretty good. This explains why I can fit so much stuff into our office. 

While this might seem a useful skill, and in many ways it is, the downside is that it means we can hoard more old tat than we should, and so periodically we clear out the entire office (no mean feat given the amount of tat I've managed to shoehorn in there), shuffle the furniture about, and fill it up again.

Yesterday afternoon and this morning were given over to this task. As always, on completion, the office looks fab. We did, ahem, reassign quite a bit of tat to the charity shop, the tip and the attic, so some of the hoard was reduced.

A job very well done. Couldn't imaging doing it with two kittens around our feet (OMG OMG OMG CATS CATS CATS).

Here are a couple of shelves from the office. Can you tell who they belong to?

---

This afternoon I had an eye-opening experience. If you look at the few pictures of me on the internet from the last few years (yesterday's MOMA shot is a prime example), I am either wearing glasses, have them on a string round my neck, or perched on the top of me bonce.

This is because I'm getting old and need glasses to read. My arms are too short. I can't hold the reading matter far enough away. 

Today I went to a local opticians and tried a single contact lens in my right eye. The lens had my reading prescription in it. I have never even considered contacts before.

The optician checked my eye and deemed it very healthy, and then popped a lens in - "look down, look left, there we go".

My eye watered a little. I felt a scratchy mildly irritating sensation for about ten seconds then nothing. I picked up my phone, and by crikey I could read it. It is a miracle. Now the reading wasn't as clear as with my glasses, and the distance was compromised a little, but the optician explained that it would take a few days for my brain to balance the two completely. But within seconds of popping the little blighter in, I could read without glasses. 

I now have to have another appointment so they can teach me how to put them in and take the out, and after a trial period, I can take them home.

It was a genuinely astonishing incident. Is it too strong to say life changing? Probably, but I have to say I'm very excited about the prospect of not having to glasses to read ALL the time.

" in regione caecorum rex est luscus" - in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king