In days of yore, people were used to some pretty harsh treatment.
Like for example, the medieval system of law, which involved subjecting the hapless accused to various heinous ordeals. There was ordeal by water (chuck you in, see if you float) or ordeal by fire (carry a red hot metal bar for three paces to prove your innocence) being among the favourites meted out to the general populus. On the other hand, noblemen accused of some misdemeanour would be subjected to the more ‘civilised’, but equally deadly, ordeal by combat.
Of course these days our legal system may seem a bit pussy by comparison. Indeed were it not for the ingenuity of modern medical science we might well have grown soft. But thanks to advances in technology to ‘improve our lives’, we have developed modern equivalents; chief among which, in my humble view, are ‘ordeal by dentist’ and, as I have just experienced, ‘ordeal by eye test’.
Faced by the inevitability of my ageing visual decline, oft I recently trotted to take my medicine, seduced by the reassuring adverts of visual heaven that awaits us all, thanks to the generous offerings of the corporate opticians.
And so I arrive for my appointment at the building in question, which is suitably located on busy cross-roads in central York. There’s little doubt in my mind that the site was chosen to remove any lingering doubt that an eye test is needed. Merely surviving the jostling along the crowded pavements and the dash across the traffic-laden street was a feat in itself.
I find my way through the heavily-laden showroom of designer frames to the receptionist’s desk and am promptly dispatched again, to find my way up a narrow stairway next door to the chamber of eye-testing horrors.
My allotted time arrives and I am called into a small alcove, cluttered with suspicious-looking instruments of torture, for what is clearly to be a softening up, or pre-test process. A formidable, white-coated lady commands me to sit in a mechanical chair, surrounded by an enormous assemblage of ominous gadgetry that would impress the henchmen of Spectre as they prepared James Bond for his final interrogation and slow dispatch.
The first part of the process is merely a physical ordeal. Designed to stimulate your pain threshold and assess, I surmise, whether you have any sight worth saving. So there sit, hunched forward, my head immobilised in a metallic clamp reminiscent of a Scold’s bridle. My captor approaches closely, and stares into my left eye with a kind of strap-on microscope. My curiosity turns to anxiety as she swings an ominous probe to within millimetres of my eye, and before I can think of how I might defend myself against the coming unknown, a short, sharp pulse of compressed air strikes my eye like a small kick in the brain. My reflex head jerk is immediate, and I am only prevented from suffering whiplash by the restraining harness clamped tightly around my skull. She moves on to repeat with the other eye.
Having pummelled my eyeballs with these gas guns she next turns to a second robotic arm, whose bright bean of light she trains directly at my first eye. I am just acclimatising to the beam in this darkened room when, with the flick of a button, she causes a flash of light of incredible brilliance to pierce my eye, in a way that renders me immediately and completely blind in that eye, as if hit by a thousand camera flash guns simultaneously. Again the process is repeated with the other eye before I am sent back to the waiting room, stumbling against chairs as I go, to wait for the next part of my ordeal.
This time what I assume to be a deceptively charming young lady, also clad in laboratory white, leads me into a second chamber. My eyes are slowly recovering from the assault by air and lightening , and I now appear to face the mental torture of the reading test. Now years ago we just had to cover up one eye with a card and read off a chart on a wall. Nowadays they have another contraption that you stare into, first to count dots of light or blurry letters that are thrown out of focus and distorted by an array of lenses. Then you are made to look through the same lens machine at a modern version of the letters on the wall chart. Eye strain is starting to hurt. I am wondering if I could make it to the door before my attractive captor can sound the alarm. She is already tapping a series of encoded data into her computer. Maybe she’s alerted the guards... I sit and wait.
But a final surprise awaits me. She now swings her chair around in front of me and places her own head into the other side of my restraining helmet, so that I am now gazing straight into her eyes. she asks me to keep looking straight ahead into their deep pools (my words not hers). She has nice eyes, and I find her direct, returned gaze most engaging, in a weird way. But then the best bit of all. She now asks me to look, first up, and then down. Up was fine, was OK, the ceiling was plain, white and featureless. But when I looked down I found I was staring right into her most appealing cleavage.
I have to say it was a first for me. Being actually commanded by a pretty female to fix my stare at her chest in this way. So what could I do? I didn’t question it, and willingly obeyed. It was a little less easy to return to looking her in the eye as she switched from my left to my right, but fortunately she was soon asking me once again to look briefly up, and then down again, and I was rewarded with a second irresistible command to peer through the low-buttoned lab coat into the ravine beneath.
Alas all too soon this part of the process was over and I was released to go about my way. Admittedly the rest is all a bit of a haze to me, but certainly that last element of my ‘ordeal’ was clearly well designed to make me forget all about the earlier discomforts, and I shall be raring to go next time my screening date arises.
I wonder if they have male opticians for the lady eye-test incumbents. If not ladies, remember this catchy reminder: “Should have gone to Chippendales”.
