Progressive Thoughts - Day 11

There is one British band carrying the torch for Progressive Rock into the future and are bringing the genre to the masses. That band is Muse and today’s song is one of their classics. It is called Survival and was the official anthem for the London 2012 Olympics.

It’s a great song that illustrates the drive to achieve a sporting triumph and characterises the desire to keep on striving to reach your goals.

When I was a young lad, I used to watch sport and dream of achieving similar goals. I was hindered slightly because my eyesight is so poor that there are certain sports I could only dream of attempting.

Take football for example – or if you are American, I mean “soccer” ( I will try not to rant about the sport that you guys call “football” because, don’t forget, I am endeavouring to be positive in 2017 and not antagonise anybody – besides, you have enough on your plate with Donald Trump!).

To play football, you need good eyesight and I can barely see the other players on my own team let alone the bloody ball. I did try playing football in my spectacles a couple of times, but each time I ended up in pain. One time, the ball hit me full in the face and the frame of my glasses pierced the skin above my eye giving me a nasty cut more reminiscent of boxing.

I tried repeatedly to play without them but failed. One time, the goalkeeper cleared the ball in my direction and I ran forward to where I thought it would end up. My fellow team mates yelled at me – all I could hear was my name being called. Sadly, I thought they were expecting a pass the moment that I plucked the ball from the air, like a professional footballer would do; the truth is that they were yelling for another reason. I looked up into the sky and the ball hit me full in the face almost breaking my nose. I fell in a heap on the floor and the opposition players almost collapsed in laughter.

Another game I tried was rugby, which is more like American Football – but much more violent and with no added protection.

I regarded rugby as legalised bullying and in order to thrive you needed to have good eyesight (fail!), be big (fail!) and be strong (fail!).

I was fast, and could run when the ball somehow found its way into my hands but sadly my other flaws let me down and I ended up breathing mud having been flattened by angry meatheads twice my size and weight.

Cricket was another choice and I could play with my glasses on. The problem was that the ball is constructed in Hell and is a small hard missile hurled at you at ridiculous speeds and, if it makes contact, can cause huge pain.

Athletically, I was okay. I was quite fast and excelled in 100m, 200m, long jump and triple jump. My stamina was also high thanks to trying out cross country running so I was a very competent distance runner, doing well at 1500m and 5000m.

The field events were a challenge. I opted out of trying to throw a hammer, discus or javelin in case I impaled the sports teacher, although at the time I wouldn’t have been too sad because he was a sadistic rugby player (and a complete bastard) who hated me for some reason.

My sports teacher

I’ve tried a few sports over the years such as tennis, swimming, table tennis, badminton and hockey but my love was always football and I carried on playing five-a-side well into my late 30’s before finally giving up and joining a gym to keep fit.

Now, in my mid-50’s the only sport that I can excel in is walking – and I love to do that alone with my iPod as a soundtrack.

I would dearly have loved to have been a professional footballer but God had other ideas; you can’t play football if your eyesight is worse than Mr Magoo’s.

If all of the rumours about the afterlife are true and one day I end up facing judgement I plan to ask the following questions:

Why the bad eyesight? 

What did I do wrong?

And before you ask, yes I did try contact lenses and I almost threw up over the optician’s suit.

That would have been most unpleasant.

Mr Squeamish

The other day, I sat down on my sofa with my evening meal and started watching a television programme that both Mrs PM and I really like. I started eating and watched the next scene – and almost retched.

I saw a man lying on an operating table with his chest cut open and a doctor probing the red mess inside.

“Oh for God’s sake!” I exclaimed covering my eyes. “I’m eating  my dinner!”

I kind of hoped that the doctor on the TV would turn to me and say “Sorry Dave, we’ll move on to a more tasteful scene while you eat!”

Of course, he didn’t and I did my usual trick; I turned to Mrs PM and said “Tell me when it’s over.”

She just laughed, as she usually does and watched avidly, chomping on her food as if nothing odd was happening.

Deep down, I knew that the bloody scene on my television screen was not real and, in fact, was the product of the special effects department at the studio. Yet I couldn’t help myself. I waited until Mrs PM gave me the all clear.

There’s a deep irony here, dear reader, because a lot of the shows I like contain a lot of gore and blood and guts are frequently exposed. Yet each time I cringe inwardly and my stomach lurches because I simply cannot stand the sight of blood, real or otherwise.

I am squeamishness personified – I am Mr Squeamish.

I think if I were to injure myself I would pass out, not from shock, but from the sight of my own blood.

It’s embarrassing.

Many years ago, I had a blood test and, as the nurse, prepared my arm, she could tell that something was wrong.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“I’m a little squeamish,” I said.

“Most men are,” she said in a tone that was not meant to be mocking but somehow made me feel ashamed. I had to look away as she inserted the needle and drew out my lifeblood.

“There – it’s all over,” she said with a smile when she had finished. I felt like a child.

I’m not a big fan of needles, generally, and have similar experiences when I have to have a vaccination for trips abroad. One nurse actually told me off once because I was so tense that she was struggling to push the needle into my skin.

“Just relax,” she said, again as if I were a five year old. “The tenser you are, the longer this will take and the more it will hurt.”

It’s the same story at the dentist. My last major dental operation was to have a crown replaced and that experience was totally unpleasant, from the injection in my gum to the ripping out of the existing crown. I hate the sound of metal against metal or metal against enamel and I had to endure what seemed like an eternity as the dentist grinded his pliers against my crown in a desperate attempt to pull the thing off.

I also have a thing about eyes. My eyesight is terrible and many years ago I wanted to try contact lenses so that I could play football without being blind. The cost of a contact lens trial at the optician was £10 and I may as well have simply set fire to the note instead of handing over to the optician.

As soon as he went anywhere near to my eye, I flinched and pushed him away.

“Look,” he said in exasperation. “You have to let me do this.”

In the end, I turned as white as a ghost and felt extremely nauseous, so much so that he stopped immediately and offered me a glass of water.

“Are you going to be sick?” he asked, now looking concerned (probably more for the state of his consultancy room than for me).

“Maybe, “ I said trying desperately to hold onto the contents of my stomach.

Thankfully I survived and after five minutes I managed to pull myself together and walk out of the optician with his words ringing in my ears:

“You are too sensitive for contact lenses.”

Really he meant:

“You are too squeamish for contact lenses.”

Happily, I am not the most squeamish person I know. There is a guy at work who cringes at the very mention of the word “needle”. This weakness was exploited to maximum effect the other week. For some reason I mentioned the fact that the vaccination nurse had struggled to insert the needle in my arm because of the tense knotted muscles and he visibly looked shaken. I shall call him Mr Ultrasqueam.

“Just shut up,” he ordered.

“Why?” I asked.

“I pharrking HATE needles; they make me feel ill!” he exclaimed.

My desk buddies at work love this kind of stuff. When a member of the desk exposes a weakness, it is exploited with maximum prejudice and we all join in an attack, like sharks circling a drowning man in the sea.

Another desk buddy started laughing and told me in no uncertain terms that I was an utter wimp. He then went on to describe an operation that he had had in great detail involving needles, scalpels, a local anaesthetic and a very, very vulnerable part of the male anatomy.

He went into great detail including the mishaps. I won’t mention this in detail (in order to maintain the good taste element of my blog) but suffice it to say that Mr Ultrasqueam covered his ears with his hands and started shouting:

“For phark’s sake SHUT UP!”

There was blood in the water now and no mercy was shown. Other tales of needle mishaps and nasty operations were mentioned by other buddies and in the end the colour started draining from Mr Ultrasqueam’s face as he desperately implored us to shut up.

“I thought I was squeamish,” I said laughing, “but in my case I have to actually see the needle.”

“STOP MENTIONING PHARKING NEEDLES!” he screamed.

At this point we relented, in case he actually threw up. But it was hilarious.

A little later, when he had recovered, he said:

“If I EVER have to have even a minor operation, I will order them to give me a general anaesthetic so that I don’t have to be there when they start cutting and hacking.”

“You do know that they give you a local anaesthetic with a needle,” I said.

“STOP MENTIONING PHARRKING NEEDLES!” he shouted again.

I will remember this next time I am the victim of our wonderful banter.

In fact, I think I might start calling him "Needles"!

How about you, dear reader?

Are you as squeamish as Mr Squeamish (i.e. me)?

Are you as bad as Mr Ultrasqueam?

Eye Spy

My last post was about my eyes, or more accurately my appalling eyesight. For this post I want to talk about the problem I have with eyes.

I hate them.

Perhaps that’s too strong a word.

I love gazing into Mrs PM’s eyes and I have no problem looking at a person’s eyes when I’m talking to them. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to drag my eyes away from the other person’s eyes, particularly if they are female. I try not to look men in the eye because, typically, it is a sign of aggression. I only do so when I’m trying to make a point.

But I love looking at women’s eyes. They are fascinating.

So why did I say that I hate eyes? Allow me to explain.

In my opinion eyes belong in eye sockets and nowhere else. That’s where they live. That is their accommodation and it is permanent accommodation. They have no business trying to escape from their prisons. Moreover, I should only be able to see that fraction of the eyeball that protrudes from the eye socket.

Furthermore, eyes should not be touched by anything but the inside of an eyelid. And I mean anything. I don’t want to see fingers near eyes and definitely not anything sharp. I can watch horror films but the moment anything like a needle goes anywhere near an eye I’m afraid I have to vomit.

Finally, eyes should be appreciated from a distance. I don’t want to get up close and personal with anybody’s eye – not even my own. I do not want to see bloodshot eyes or weird eyes.

You may have guessed something about me but if you are still puzzled then allow me to make my position clear.

I AM VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY SQUEAMISH ABOUT EYES.

Allow me to take you on a journey through my life in order to explain how this weird fear of eyes has hindered me.

I used to love playing football but my appalling short-sightedness was a major problem. In the early days, when I first acquired glasses, I used to play wearing them. You can imagine what happened. I destroyed several pairs and totally annoyed my parents. Balls have hit me in the face, I’ve suffered cuts and glasses have flown off my head only to be stamped on accidentally by myself and others in an attempt to find them.

At junior school I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to play football in my spectacles. And this left me with several grave problems; I couldn’t see my team mates; I couldn’t see the ball; I was hopeless as a result.

So I suffered until I left school and went to university. My mother wasn’t well off and I was left to fend for myself on a paltry student grant. The subject of contact lenses came up and some of my friends were starting to invest in them (or more accurately their parents were).

I couldn’t afford them so I didn’t bother – that is until I started playing football at work.

All of a sudden I had the cash to be able to afford them. I played football several times a week in a brightly lit enclosed gym and I could cope with the difficulty of not seeing because everybody wore bright clothes; I just passed to a distant red blob for example.

And then we started playing 11-a-side outside and I simply couldn’t see. The goalkeeper hoofed the ball up the field in my direction and all of my teams mates yelled “Dave! Dave! DAVE!!!!” as I ran blindly up the wing. I turned around and simply could not see the ball until it was two inches from my face, giving me approximately one nanosecond to move my head out of the way. Of course I failed, got the ball square on the nose and fell over in a heap with all players laughing at my blind stupidity including my own team mates.

I played with my spare glasses on one occasion and the ball smacked me square in the face, causing the frames to dig in and cut my just above my eye, wrecking yet another pair of glasses.

I had to get contact lenses.

My optician was offering a “contact lens” trial for the princely sum of £15. The idea behind it was that I would allow a man to put a pair of contact lenses in my eyes to see how they felt and whether they were suitable.

And it was a trial and the biggest waste of £15 in my life.

Each time he approached my eye, I flinched and pulled my head back. Deep down in my mind, my fear of eyes was kicking in. My brain screamed at me:

DON’T LET HIM NEAR YOUR EYES.

After ten minutes of frustration, he started to get annoyed.

“LOOK – I HAVE TO DO THIS!” he said, trying his best to be friendly with his patience at snapping point.

“OK, I’m sorry,” I said.

He tried once more and this time I forced myself to comply.

“That’s better,” he said as he gently approached my eye.

And then I flinched again. I thought he was going to punch me.

At that point, something happened within. My brain had been screaming at me not to allow this man to touch my eyeball or even get within an inch of it. The effort and the fear combined to create a tsunami of nausea within.

“I feel sick,” I declared.

The optician almost fell off his chair. Panicking, he rushed out of the little room, while I sat there like a complete lemon, clutching my head and trying to surf the wave of queasiness threatening to engulf me.

He returned with a glass of water and said “I don’t think contact lenses are suitable for you.”

No shit, Sherlock!

Suffice it to say my brush with contact lenses failed. Who was I kidding anyway? There was no way I would have found the courage to put them in and take them off. Shortly afterwards I gave up football.

I was quite pleased to have failed because a friend told me a horror story about his experience with contact lenses. He had wobbled home drunk one night and collapsed onto his settee where he fell asleep. He woke up at three in the morning and decided to find his bed. However, he was convinced that he still had his contact lenses in and spent a good ten minutes pinching his eyeball trying to extract them, only to discover that he had taken them out earlier.

I think I threw up at this point in the story.

Mrs PM used to wear contact lenses and glasses occasionally too.

She has no qualms about touching her eye or doing anything else with them. It was no surprise to me when she announced a few years ago that she was going to have laser eye surgery.

As is usual with Mrs PM, she doesn’t do things by halves; she goes in stampeding like a crazed animal.

“I’m going to have both eyes done at once,” she declared. “I need you to come with me.”

At the time I didn’t know anything about laser eye surgery. I am a curious soul so I did a little research. I wish I hadn’t.

Naively, I assumed that the laser altered the shape of you lens, thus correcting the focal length.

What I discovered chilled me to the very marrow of my bones, so much so that I can barely bring myself to type the words that describe the procedures available. Suffice it to say it involves cutting and burning the eyeball.

On the day of the surgery, I escorted Mrs PM to the clinic in the centre of Manchester, like the devoted partner I am. Mrs PM was calm and assured, if not a little nervous; I was a total wreck.

Mrs PM was offered valium; I demanded some but was refused.

As we waited, I noticed three other people, one of whom had one eye bandaged. Mrs PM, succumbing to the effects of the valium, was called in.

The guy with the bandage started a conversation with me.

Mr Bandage: Are you having your eyes done?

PM: No! I’m too squeamish.

Mr Bandage: You should you know – it’s fabulous.

PM: Why is your eye bandaged?

Mr Bandage: Oh they got it wrong and are doing it again.

AGAIN????? So this man’s eye had been butchered, they had messed up and now his eye was going to be butchered again?

Mrs PM went in for her “treatment”. At this point I noticed a funny smell pervading through the waiting room.

PM: I wonder what that funny smell is.

Mr Bandage: That’s the laser burning her eyes.

PM: You mean that the smell is burning eyeball?

Mr Bandage: Yes – that’s a good way of putting it.

He watched in amusement as I rushed to the bathroom to do battle with yet another eye-related tsunami of nausea. I just got out in time to see a valium-drugged Mrs PM wobbling out of the eyeball burning room.

Thankfully, Mrs PM’s laser treatment worked a treat and she now has perfect eyesight.

I, on the other hand, have the same poor short-sightedness coupled with long-sightedness.

How the hell can I have BOTH???

To cure this new problem with my pathetic eyes, I have just acquired a pair of varifocals. I am just getting used to the concept of having to adjust my eyes to look through the correct part of the lens - and I haven't fallen over once.

I suffered headaches for the first day, coupled with a “swimming sensation” and a total fear of walking downstairs – it was as if I looking at stuff through drunk eyes.

Thankfully I am used to them now and don’t wobble around like a crazed drunkard.

It does mean that I can see distance and read without having to take off my glasses.

Well, that’s enough about my eyes. I’ve suffered name calling, humiliation and nausea. I’ve suffered pain, torment and heartache.

The one good thing about this modern world is that wearing glasses is now considered “cool” so I look like a fashion icon.

My new glasses, selected by Mrs PM, are trendy and make me look, in her words, “sexy”. Other ladies have said that I look "intelligent".

Take that Joe 90! Take that Milky Bar kid! Take that skinheads who took the piss out of me in the pub. Take that kid whose nose I bloodied for calling me "four eyes".

I love my glasses.