Before my eyes turn square for good...

SpecSavers have got some bloody cheek.

I was checking my scattered pile of post, which probably wouldn't be so scattered if it wasn't a bi-monthly process, and I found an envelope from the opticians.

"Dear Mr Osborn,

It is now time for your eye test."

Oh really? The same one I have to pay for?

You wouldn't get a flyer shoved through your letterbox with "It is now time for your £7.99 medium Meat Feast" in bold type, would you?

Maybe you would. I dropped marketing - along with the rest of my sixth form subjects - when I discovered that I couldn't go home for lunch. It says much for my high school priorities, which you'll be glad to hear, still haven't changed.

I can't stand the opticians. Or the doctors, or the dentists for that matter. In fact, I don't like visiting any clinic where the most you can expect to be given is the all-clear.

In any case, I'm a sufferer of terrible eyesight. I use glasses at work and if I ever learn to tame a vehicle, I'll be using them to drive too. But I really don't like glasses. So much so that I tried to get some contact lenses last year.

SpecSavers made a great big song and dance about the process. They brought me in to an isolated room, gave me some eye lubricant (insert your technical term here), and expected me to miraculously find the ability to touch my eye without blinking.

Sorry guys, but a fifteen minute appointment isn't quite going to be long enough for me to re-train my instinctive reactions so that my eye doesn't close when something is poked in it. They couldn't see this, however, and refused to discharge me with the lens to try at home.

Why? Because if I get it in, and can't get it back out...I could require medical attention.

Well we could say that for a lot of things, but unless you're exceptionally kinky, I don't see why a SpecSavers staff member has to be present.

As a bonafide male, I suppose it's my duty to report that I've stumbled a'foul of the deadly Man Flu. Terrible, it is. I spent my walk home from work coughing and spluttering at potential sympathy bearers. Given that I have the route scouted, I made sure to eyeball the CCTV cameras with a few agonised sniffles.

And then, of course, I had a wonderful ten minute wait at Harrow on the Hill station. With hoards of commuters all around me, it was the perfect opportunity to have a bloody good hack and cough. I wheezed my heart out, yet not one briefcase-laden yuppy cared enough to offer me so much as a pitiful glance from the side of his London Lite.

Apparently this blog has received over 1000 visits in the last month. I'm quietly impressed that so many people have so very little to do that they'd bother to trawl through my scribbles.

I never anticipated that I'd end up posting some of the entries that I have. But when you know certain people read what you're saying, it's nigh on impossible not to slip in the odd veiled message. Or in my case, the odd veiled essay. I could write a frigging 200 page novel on certain passing eyes.

Speaking of novels, I have finally finally finished the draft of the work I started back in 2004. Now I'm faced with the hassle of preparing manuscripts and weeding the inevitable polite rejections from the not-so-ambiguous "Please never submit to us again if you're the last writer on Earth" correspondence.

We'll see how it goes, though. Writing is my main passion in the money making sense. And I highlight the term "money making" because it would be thoroughly homosexual of me to admit to writing out of enjoyment...which, err, is unfortunately the case.