The other side of the seaside

Yesterday I was extolling the joys of living where we do; today I was back to cursing the inconvenience of it all. I had a fairly tightly organised morning when I woke up - tight enough to prevent me from doing any Italian until early evening. First of all I had a regular check-up with the optician, which threw my programme into disarray from the off as the woman ahead of me had turned up 25 minutes late. My optician, whom I've been attending for years, offered to do the sight test part so that I could have my reading glasses updated - my original prompt to make the appointment - but I'd had some odd symptoms this morning (a curtain of starry lights as I blinked - think I'd squashed the eye on the pillow while I was asleep!) and said no, go ahead. (While she was setting up one of the tests, I made a quick phone call to move the appointment for a hair cut a couple of hours further on). I was intrigued by the new piece of kit - the one that does a scan of the retina, so that she could show me all manner of slightly alarming images and one worrying red segment which she told me just meant that she was to keep an eye on(sorry!) on this bit. The good news was that my distance vision is better than it has been since I was ten, though I'm under no illusions about it and know the physics of it because it was one of the few areas of Higher Physics that I actually understood ...

I staggered up the road a full 80 minutes after I'd left the house, gasping for a coffee, my pupils enlarged so much as to make me look like a visiting alien. I could barely see my phone, but was able to make our that the weather (I've not mentioned yet the fact that there was a rather brisk southerly wind with gale-force gusts, from the South) had caused Western Ferries to announce on an amber warning that they couldn't take any high-sided vehicles. 

We had coffee, followed by some bread and cheese and tea, and then headed for said ferry, just making the 1.20 before it left. We bounced across the Firth backwards, which is when I took the utterly pathetic photo that adorns today's blip: the view on the car deck as the rain and sea spattered the windscreen and the bow rose and fell sickeningly. (In a southerly wind, the ferries go backwards in a southerly direction and then reverse to go with the sea from halfway; it works extremely well.)

The hair wash before my cut was the most relaxing thing that happened all day - Michael has acquired a new staff member, and she's brilliant at it. We had our usual comprehensive gossip as he cut, and I emerged into torrential rain to meet a soaking Himself, who'd been shopping and was caught in an earlier downpour. A quick coffee and cannoli in Tonino's and we were on our way home over a much calmer sea. 

Before dinner I filled in the longest questionnaire ever about my health status for my dental surgery - apparently obviating the need to fill in a form at each session - and did half an hour of Italian while Himself cooked curry. I watched sporadic telly while drifting in and out of sleep, and came up to bed at midnight.

I think you could say my normal life is well and truly re-established ...