Lack of focus

This is just a short post to convey my current irritation at ageing. My new anxiety is that my eyes take a long time to be able to focus in the morning. I've noticed it recently whilst attempting to vizmig first thing in the morning from my balcony - I just cannot resolve birds with the naked eye for really quite a long time after rising, up to half an hour sometimes. Even getting binoculars in focus is becoming quite hard. Why could this be? Well, what I would definitely not advise is any form of self-diagnosis online as half the websites I checked suggested I was going to die. Instead I am pinning my hopes on being the wrong side of 45 and spending too much time looking at computer screens.

This week my eyes have been particularly unresponsive, and I think there is a direct correlation between this and the rather long shifts I've been putting in at work. All that screen time surely has to be detrimental. And of course a good portion of it is now in a darkened room as the days become ever shorter. One thing to try is turning my lights on earlier perhaps - in the office they were simply on all the time, but here at home I have a tendency to forget. They're "smart" lights though, so perhaps I can code them to come on for sunset - something to look at. Or more likely something for a child to look at - most technology in Chateau L is now handled by a younger workforce. We bought a new television last year and I look at it so infrequently I still struggle to get it on the right mode. Back in the day a TV was just a TV. These days it's connected to all manner of other things and getting it to display the one I want is often beyond me.  

I have a horrible feeling though that the thing I actually need to look at is spectacles. About three years ago I got a free eye test through work and toddled down to an opticians/glasses shop in Canary Wharf. They did various tests and determined that one eye was "0" and the other was "0.25". I cannot now recall exactly what this meant, but they then proceeded to try and sell me a £300 pair of glasses which I am pretty sure did next to nothing as there was not really much to do. I politely declined and strode youthfully out of the shop. I am now wondering if I need to slink decrepitly back in as the curve of decline has probably steepened markedly. 

Ah middle age, how I have looked forward to your arrival. I have all sorts of niggles these days. I cannot remember if I shared my intestinal issues here? Perhaps not, probably for the best. Anyway that's a constant background to my life these days, a dull pain in my lower abdomen (all checked out in a variety of unpleasant ways, not fatal, just annoying). As is an increasing ache in my left hip. Back ache, lots of that, no doubt exacerbated by poor posture and crappy desk chair. Then there's the feet issue, any more than seven miles of walking and agony inflicts the top of my feet and ankles. Oh, and the tennis elbow which until last month had gone away but then I tripped over in Cornwall whilst holding my camera and in effort to preserve it threw that out again. I could go on and on. The hard thing to reconcile is that none of this is going away, and indeed that it is all going to get progressively worse as the years tick by. Fortunately I have a great wine cellar, planned to near perfection to coincide with this new period in my life. Yes, that's the answer, wine. I'll go to the opticians later.