Damn bloody stupid things. ‘Make life easier.’ My arse. Contact lenses. Balls. After a week, I’ve settled into a routine: I spend 15 minutes getting the invisible, ridiculously thin, inconceivably wide plastic disks in my eyes. I stumble away almost completely blinded from the mirror, with eyes not so much bloodshot as blood filled and blinking like a demented lunatic. After an hour or two, my vision has just about reached the flickering equivalent of a 1920’s movie and I’m ready to face to world. At three hours, the sensation is pretty close to having some grit in my eye, albeit the sort of grit they spread on roads. Yes, just like road grit, complete with Gritter, quietly nestling under each eyelid.
By three o’clock this afternoon, I succumbed to rubbing my eyes rabidly. It seemed to do the trick, much less irritation. Four o’clock and I’m thinking “Is it meant to be this blurry?” A quick check in the mirror reveals I’m 50% down in the contact lenses department. Bugger. And of course when I say ‘quick’ I’m not talking painless. As anyone who’s had to remove lenses will understand, the process involves deliberately stabbing your pupil with your index finger and then pinching the cornea. It’s made significantly more difficult when there’s no lens there.
I had no idea how much my carpets need a good vac but crawling with your nose 3 inches from the floor and sweeping your hands as you go throughout the house uncovers all sorts of things, toenails, a few zloty, boiled sweets, Argos pens and such like. But not my stupid bloody contact lens. Buggery Bugger Bugger.
Of course, you know how this story ends. Four hours later, after ordering a replacement, enjoying a couple of hours clear vision in my glasses and a swim, the damn, demon-possessed piece of plastic miraculously reappears in my eye, albeit, inside out. Un-fucking-believable. And I pay money for this.