Aww man…

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So, at the weekend I did, indeed, complete the Commando Challenge, in a not unrespectable 2 hours. The difference between running on the flat in Slough and running up the hills in Exeter is fairly impressive. The first section of the Commando Challenge shall live in my memory as – “I’m going to die, and my team will hate me”. First up there was the ‘warm up’. This was more exercise than I’d normally partake doing a run. My warm up at home is stretches and such; theirs was sit-ups and press-ups and commando crawls, and crab walking… in front of an audience. I think I acquitted myself adequately…but I realise that I look terrible in the photos – not happy with how I look at all. Must get fitter. :(

Anyhow. After a gentle jog down hill, you’re presented with what seems to be an unrelenting uphill slog, it’s a 3k run before the obstacle course, and so far as I can tell was, as I mentioned, almost entirely up. On the final stretch of the final hill, my body just said “NO!” and I dropped from being at the back of our group to walking. A swift ‘power’ walk, but I just couldn’t get the rhythm to keep running. But once up at the top, and into the ‘challenge’ bit, that was fine. Except…

…on the first ‘water feature’* my glasses headed south. Into a 3’ deep pool of muddy water. After about 5 minutes of arsing around under the water trying to find them (it was fucking freezing) I declared them lost – the army guy said he’d keep people looking for them (!) and we carried on. Those of you who know me, know I’m essentially blind without my glasses. A whole 3″ of forward vision is about what I’ve got – and the entire rest of the 4k challenge and 3k road run back was done like that.

It was, however, awesome fun.

It was also incredibly expensive – in so far as I managed to spectacularly loose my glasses, and have no spares. So Monday was a very stressful day, encountering helpful companies with no stock, and the ever unhelpful Slough branch of Specsavers**, who’s slogan appears to be “No We Can’t”.

I had my sunglasses so, thankfully, could drive into town. Specsavers immediately informed me that they don’t do same-day glasses (I didn’t think so) and would not issue new contacts on either my old prescription or my new one without a new appointment, and no, they couldn’t do an appointment today. The best they could do was glasses sometime by the end of the week, possibly, although it could take 11 days. No promises.

Thus commenced the running. I went to ‘cheap and dodgy opticians’ who could do me a contact lens appointment, and had my lenses in stock (for my 4 year old contact prescription, which it turns out has switched perfectly, so far as I can tell, from one eye to the other). But not until 1020. And they weren’t sure they could do lenses until they’d had the appointment. I booked it.

Vision express didn’t have my lenses in stock, either posh ones for my astigmatism, monthly ordinary ones, or daily ordinary ones. But they could do me a pair of glasses, within the hour.

In the end, at enormous expense I ended up getting glasses (next day) and contacts (that day). They are 3 times the cost of the glasses I had before and essentially exactly the same. Granted it’s a metal frame rather than a plastic one and it has ‘Pepe Jeans’ written on it, where my old ones sported a printed number on the inside to identify the SpecSavers code. The manager of Vision Express is an example of how customer service should be. He actually remembered my name when I walked in the next day, no prompts… He just looked, paused, confirmed my name and then organised my glasses being fitted.

I have to go back on monday for a repeat contact lens appointment, and am painfully broke. But, I did enjoy wearing them again – and having worked out that my eyes have flipped sides (the weaker one is on the R now) and incredibly – comparing the new glasses prescription (well, from March) with the 2005 contact prescription, the power of lens required to correct my crappy eyesight for each eye has exactly switched. Yesterday I tried switching the R & L lenses (BC and Diameter are the same) and lo, I could see *way* better.

I’m happy, although I’m not sure how to break to my optometrist that I’ve done such a thing… :)

To top it off, yesterday, while trying my new glasses and doing that ‘ooh, the world feels odd’ thing that new glasses do if you switch midday, I knocked my bloody cafetiere off the counter, along with a mug I liked. I’ve now managed to loose my favourite mug and one of the better sized second places :(

And I had to make coffee in a tea-filter today :(

I know I’m tired, and thus more prone to acts of extreme clumsyness, but gah.

Anyhow, shower now, then lunch. I forgot to make bread again. So I’ll pop it in to start while I’m here and then take it out later (unless Kathryn does it first).

* I don’t want to see their gardens.
** Although I have a much better understanding of why they’re called Specsavers now.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.