Old, but perennially funny

A beautiful sunny day, clouds thinning out and a temperature of 21 degrees, good for the morale. We were ten when I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. I collected this week's veggy bag on my way home. Clare cooked prawns with spinach, beetroot tops and rice for lunch. Delicious summer flavours. The raspberry canes in the garden are producing a handful of ripe fruit each day at the moment, a small tasty treattfrom our small beautiful garden.

I had an optician's appointment at two, and lingered a little too long over the pleasures lunch, so I wasn't able to walk there and had to call a taxi. Driving was out of the question, as the test required dilation of pupils, prior to a retinal scan. The scan was unsuccessful when I went for my annual test three months ago because of my left eye cataract. Optometrist Ceri agreed to examine me with the intention to refer me for cataract surgery at the Heath. This time she established there's no macular degeneration, but the cataract is causing enough visual impairment to justify putting me on the very lengthy NHS queue for surgery. I might hear I'm on the waiting list in three months, but the wait could be a couple of years. 

My taxi driver chatted to me about his cataract surgery, done privately. He said it cost fifteen hundred pounds which he had to pay in instalments. I don't think that I want to afford that much, In general, my vision is pretty good despite the cataracts, it's just that my vision is misty due to light dispersion when the sun is low in the sky. It's a real nuisance when I'm using a camera. I have to rely on auto-focus, point and shoot. Only when I've uploaded the pictures is it possible to see if they're any good.

A walk home with my pupils still dilated, able to see around me quite well. When it came to looking at messages on my phone and later on my computer, however blurred vision continued until supper time. Afterwards I went for a walk around Thompson's Park and took some photos of the evening sun shining through the trees as it neared the horizon, grateful to be able to see fairly clearly again. We laughed our way through a couple of episodes of 'Allo,Allo' before turning in. Like 'Fawlty Towers' it is classic sit-com and is as entertaining now as it was forty years ago. There's very little contemporary comedy that will prove as durable.