TheBanyanTree: Got to admit it's getting better

[John Bailey]

Tuesday February 15, 2005

GOT TO ADMIT IT'S GETTING BETTER

We both had a rest-up day today, me from my long sleep and Graham, rather 
more justifiably, from his long journey. It's a sad fact of our long 
railway heritage that it still takes six hours to travel from South Wales 
to Lincolnshire while the train journey from London to Paris is done in 
less than two. I suppose that, if I were an assiduous researcher I'd find 
out the distances before making the comparison but I'm not. Not an 
assiduous researcher, I mean. All I have to go by is the strictly 
subjective measure by which I walk so that's the only one that really 
matters to me, the one I'll stick with. And by that measure, if Paris isn't 
further from London than South Wales is from Lincolnshire, it jolly well 
ought to be.

I pottered out into the garden, camera in hand, seeking something of 
natural interest. Not a lot, one infant crocus, bright yellow but deep 
inside a thicket of dead stalks, and a tiny cluster of snowdrops, needing 
several years of undisturbed growth before they can rightly claim the 
dignity of a clump. Not being terribly bendy today I had to resort to 
stooping and holding the camera at arm's length, pointing hopefully at the 
little blooms, relying on instinct to acheive an adequate framing. Failed 
on the crocus, but managed to secure a perfecly acceptable snowdrop shot.

For a week or two I've been bothered by a haziness in my right eye. Just 
what you want when you're turning a large chunk of your creative interest 
over to the visual arts. Dark panic seized me, I confess it. I was resigned 
to the need to go for a consultation if it didn't improve but needed some 
time yet before I could build up my determination to the point where I was 
able to contemplate making an appointment.

Today, peering in the mirror and failing once more to see anything wrong, I 
had an untypical flash of inspiration and turned to my shaving mirror, 
flipped it over to the magnifying side I use for stubborn whiskers, and 
regarded the offending orb. Darn it. Nothing wrong with the orb. It's my 
eyelashes. All my life I've been blessed with stubbly, almost invisible 
eyelashes, discrete, modest, and no trouble at all. Now, all of a sudden, 
the perishin' things have taken a mind to grow, and to grow in a completely 
unhelpful direction, right down across my eye.

"What do you do with over-grown eyelashes?" I asked, as if Graham should 
know about these things anymore than I do.

"Brush 'em out of the way."

"What, you mean with a mascara-type brush?" I asked, slightly horror-struck 
at the prospect.

"Nah, you silly old sausage. Just lick your finger and brush 'em up."

"Oh," I said. "I'll go and try that."

Do you know, it worked. It worked a treat. My eye returned to it's somewhat 
less than crystal clarity, the kind of clarity that's all you can expect 
after sixty-five-and-a-half years of hard usage. My fears disappeared in a 
flash. "Well, I'll be b*-ed," I muttered, thinking there was no-one there 
to hear me curse.

"Told you so," Graham said from the bathroom doorway where he'd been 
standing watching me with great amusement. "I'd have thought anyone would 
have known that trick."

"Only those with eyelashes," I protested. "I've never had them before."

"All part of life's rich pageant."

"That's probably the silliest thing you've said since you came home."

"I'll have to try to do better."

"Can't wait."


--

John Bailey   Lincolnshire, England

journal of a writing man:
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>