Saturday, October 22, 2005

Scientific progress goes boink

That's better. Stella Artois is horrible stuff. I'm sure there are people in the world who can drink more than three pints of it with no ill-effects, and I'm sure they're very admirable and manly people, but I'm just not one of them. So what was meant to be just showing my face at the work do last night ended up leaving me going to bed at half nine, feeling on the verge of collapse. Possibly I'm getting old.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I gave the impression last night that I was going to write about earth-shattering and exciting news, but it really isn't anything like that. When I got home from work last night I had a call from Nick the TV producer, who rather sneakily had decided to phone me to ask if I'd made my mind up about doing this documentary, rather than waiting for me to email him. So I said yes, and having thought about it a bit decided not to get back to him and say no after all. So I'm going to be on TV, yay.

He also wants to film me at work next week, so as to get to see work colleagues who know me. Not that we're going to be doing much in the way of work, although I suppose we can pretend to be busy and industrious for the camera.

So at about quarter past six I went out to the pub to meet the work people. Coming in the door, I took my glasses off to wipe the rain off them, and they snapped in half. Luckily they had a roll of sellotape behind the bar, so we made some repairs, and while they don't look pretty, they stay on my face, more or less. I haven't got a spare pair, unless you count my prescription shades, so I'm just going to have to go with the Harry Potter look for the time being. (Katydid once said I look like 'Harry Potter all grown up', which is the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me)

So this necessitated a trip to the opticians this morning. It's been three or four years since I had an eye test, so I thought it would probably be a good idea. What impressed me, though, was that everything there is much more technological than it was the last time I had them checked. Maybe the Boston Specsavers is just a lot less up to date than the Derby one (the Derby one is much, much bigger, so it probably is), but this one has lots of fancy electronic gadgets for probing and measuring your eyes. I was impressed. My prescription hasn't changed at all, same as the last eye test I had, but my new glasses are going to look a bit different. Big round ones seem to be out of fashion nowadays (well, they were never in fashion, but at least you could get them last time I was buying a pair), so I've had to go for some little rectangular ones instead. Two pairs, this time, to avoid something like this happening again. Everyone at Specsavers was adamant that the new ones would look much better on me than my old ones, so I suppose I'll get used to them. But I've worn round glasses for ages now, and I think they're part of my unique charm. Ah well.

But they can't put the things together until Thursday at the earliest, maybe not till Saturday, so I'm going to be stuck with the old ones when I'm captured on camera at work next week, most likely. My major worry about this documentary thing is that Nick is secretly evil, and is planning to make me look really bad, and while having taped-together glasses may look cute and eccentric if you present it one way, it could also make me look like some kind of socially-inadequate nerd (yes, I am one of those anyway, but you can make me look not like one if you make a documentary the right way, I'm sure).

There's just been a poll on Football Focus for cult hero goalkeepers, and Paul Bastock was one of the choices. Quite rightly too - for many years he was Boston Utd's only good player, always the kind of guy who was much too good to be playing in a non-league team, and really to be admired for sticking with the Pilgrims through thick and thin. If I had a mobile, I'd vote for him, but the poll is texts only. Perhaps I should get one. I seem to come across situations where one would be useful more and more frequently these days.

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