S is for...

... shells, also sunglasses which I had to wear all afternoon after an appointment at St Paul's Eye hospital. The specs pictured aren't mine, they are one of two pairs of pretty toddler sunnies the girls wore when they were little, and now adorn my collection of shells from years of holiday collecting. The outpatients appointment was the usual thing of sitting for literally hours amidst a seething tide of human misery with no entertainment (forgot my book) and no mobile signal to warn #1 daughter (waiting in a supermarket carpark as there is zero parking at the hospital). We later discovered she got a £90 fine for marginally overstaying the 90 minute parking limit; does anyone know if this is legally enforceable by a private company? She did purchase items from the shop - cold remedies - which made her so sleepy she dozed off waiting.

Eventually my turn came to move to another waiting room nearer the consulting rooms - then another - and another - then finally admission to see a real live opthalmic surgeon. Numerous tests later, I was administered pupil-dilating eyedrops (ouch) and left for them to take effect before being looked at again in more detail - very bright spotlight in unresponsive eyes, which gave me a funny queasy feeling a bit like I had with the cerebral angiogram I had recently. The purpose of the visit was to find out what Africa was all about. For those who haven't followed my adventures of the past year, that is a pet name I gave the blank patch in the vision of my right eye, which manifests as a shape like that continent, and is inconveniently positioned to completely fill the viewfinder of a DSLR camera. As I can't get to grips with shooting with the left eye, I just trust to autofocus these days. As a side-effect of sub-arachnoid haemorrhage can be retinal damage, I wanted to find out if this would be permanent. The good news is that the surgeon said that it is actually a bruise on the back of the eye, which is taking an abnormally long time to disperse but should eventually.

The next few hours were spent with fully dilated pupils, which, while inconvenient for everyday living, look damn sexy. I would have taken a pic but couldn't see well enough, so you get shells instead.