On Eyesight

I have been told that your eyes start to deteriorate when you are 40 so, being me, I was feeling pretty smug when I needed my first reading glasses at around the age of 50.

I wasn’t prepared though for the speed at which they subsequently declined. Now 52 I have to have X2 magnification and can only read the TV credits on the big screen – we have a home-made home cinema affair that works with a roller blind, suspended from the ceiling, as a screen.

When in the shower I have different makes of shampoo and conditioner so I know which is which. Recently, I narrowly escaped trying to top up the sunflower oil with screen wash. Both items were bulk bought and in very similar bottles and both were stored in the ‘Costco Cupboard’.

The biggest issue, well it was until today, was finding the flipping glasses when I needed them. I have glasses everywhere, in a glorious rainbow of colours from gold through red to emerald green. I even have some ‘zebra’ ones. The best kind are those you can put on top of your head, that means ones without those plastic knobs that rest on your nose and which get caught in the hair. Trouble is I often find myself wearing some on top of my head and then putting on another pair to, say, read an email. And eventually, if I’m not strict about it, they all end up in a heap in the same place!

As of today though, a much more ghastly repercussion of long-sightedness has become apparent. When combined with a (formerly) incurable habit of putting things in my mouth I am in danger of eating something disgusting. In point of fact I narrowly escaped such an event today.

As a girth mother (of diminishing proportions, I am glad to report) I make, as you know, all our cakes and biscuits. I decided to treat myself to a raisin flapjack (1.5 points on the Blubber Busters diet). I took one out of the tin and while putting the tin back in the cupboard, noticed a stray raisin on the work top. I put it to my lips, my tongue even, before I noticed the texture was a bit wrong. ‘Perhaps it has some fluff on it’ thought I and stretched out my arm to bring the object to my focal point. It was a dead fly!!!! Yuk and double yuk!!! I can’t begin to imagine what that fly had settled on before I put it to my mouth. A lesson learned.

It brings to mind the adage ‘He who laughs last, laughs loudest’. When I had my delicatessen shop, one of my staff, a lady in her 40s, also had a weight problem and was in the habit of polishing off little crumbs left on the counter after serving a customer – not something I encouraged, you understand – she once ate a bit of expanded polystyrene mistaking it for cottage cheese. I thought it was very amusing and told her that it served her right! Ah well.

I don’t want to dwell on the girth but I have lost 16.5 lbs so far and I think I can carry on like this until I have lost all the weight I want to lose (another 28 pounds). I have really enjoyed my diet and can’t sing the praises of Blubber Busters enough. Doing it on line has been best for me although I know that many people prefer to go to meetings. I have also become hooked on exercise. Whizz and I have joined a gym and are in fierce competition to see who can lose the most weight. He is in China at present, staying only in hotels with gymnasia and working out most days with, you guessed it, another gadget. This one measures his heart rate and sets him work-outs that optimise fat burning. When he gets home he won’t have been on the scales for five weeks. Tense times……