“Good afternoon, sir, how can I help?”
The man smiled back. “Hello, the name’s Terry Chamberlain. I’m here for my ten o’clock appointment.”
The girl’s eyes flicked over to a computer screen, her pupils moving down a list she was reading. Her smile faded as she looked but then returned as her eyes came across his name.
“That’s fine, sir, if you’d like to take a seat.”
Terry returned back to the main body of the shop and took a seat in the waiting area, resting his hands on his legs and fidgeting with his thumbs. He looked up and down the shop, drinking in all the details and occasionally looking at himself in one of the many mirrors, before returning to staring at his shoes.
He didn’t have long to wait before a middle-aged man in a tidy white coat and smart shirt and tie passed the reception counter and into his field of vision.
“Mr Chamberlain?” the man asked. Terry nodded and got up slowly to his feet, walking over to the man, the optician.
“How are you today?” the optician asked.
“Oh, you know,” Terry replied. “Doing OK.”
Terry followed the optician into a small side room, a room dominated by a large chair and a movable machine on a bracket that was used to test customer’s eyesight.
“If you could take a seat in the chair,” the optician said, loosely gesturing in the direction of the seat. Terry fulfilled his request, shifting into a comfortable position.
“How has your eyesight been recently?” Terry was asked. He coughed to clear his throat before speaking.
“Not so good,” Terry replied. “I think I’m in need of a change in prescription. I had a bit of an embarrassing time last week if I’m being honest.”
“Go on.”
“Well I got on my bus as usual, sitting in my usual seat, reading my usual book, well at least the one I’ve been reading for a few weeks. Nothing really unusual there, apart from the price of the bus fare. It’s only gone up again!”
“Hmm, tell me about it.”
“Well I’d planned to get to the library, pick up some new books, and that means swapping rides at the bus station. So I got off outside the coffee shop and went to the usual bus stop and waited and then got on what I thought was the right bus.”
“I take it it wasn’t?” the optician questioned, rootling around in a drawer for some tools of the trade.
“No, I thought it was the 676, but I’d got on the 616. Instead of heading to the library I was on my way to out of town. Of course, having a day ticket, I didn’t need to tell the driver where I was going so as I sat down at the back I was none the wiser. Plus, being engrossed in my book I didn’t spot we were going the wrong way until it was too late.”
“So what happened?”
“Well by the time I realised I was practically at the terminus, a little village outside the main city. A lovely place, not been there in years. Anyway, the long and short of it is that my next bus wasn’t for an hour or so, so I thought I’d make the most of the day out and headed to the local pub. A lovely pub it was too – the Red Lion. They had some real ale on from the Dales, beautiful stuff. The landlady wasn’t too bad either!”
The optician laughed as he tapped some details into the computer in the corner of the room.
“So there I was, enjoying the pint with a nice packet of crisps when I spied one of those gaming machines in the corner. Now I don’t usually bother with those. Usually a rip-off. I’ve fed more money into those things in my life, I tell you. But something made me get up and put a couple of quid in and though I lost on the first go I only went and hit the jackpot on the second. Won fifty quid!”
“Fifty? You hit lucky there.”
“I know. So I grabbed myself another pint and still had time to sup that and catch my bus. I might have been a couple of hours late to the library but I was nearly fifty quid up!”
“Sounds like it was a good day out for you.”
“It was.”
“Now,” the optician said, readying his tools for the eye test. “Let’s take a look at the problem.”
The eye test was done and dusted within just shy of ten minutes and, with a new prescription in hand, Terry was back out into the main reception area. There he was met by another member of staff who had appeared from the back. She had long, auben hair resting neatly on her shoulders and a long green dress on.
“Mr Chamberlain?” she asked. Terry nodded. “What sort of glasses are you after?”
Terry paused and thought.
“You know, I’m not too sure. Something modern but not too big. I don’t want any bottle bottoms!”
The assistant laughed.
“Well I’d say for your face shape you need a pair like this,” she said, reaching for a pair of rectangular spectacles with tapered corners, high up on the display board. She passed them over to Terry who slipped them on in exchange for his current glasses and looked at himself in the mirror.
“The problem with this,” he laughed, “Is I can’t see how I look in these without my glasses on!”
“I know,” she said, “That’s always the tricky part. What do you think?”
Terry moved his head left and right to get his impression from all the angles.
“Yes, I like them, and they’re much tighter than my last pair. You’ll never guess what I did a few days ago?”
“What?”
“Well I was in a local shop and I dropped some coins on the floor so, naturally, bent down to pick them up. Of course my glasses were loose so, bang, they slip off my nose and onto the floor, only now I can’t see where they’ve gone, and my back isn’t what it used to be.
“Luckily a young lad came by and saw what had happened and grabbed them for me, which was kind of him. So we got chatting and it turned out he has quite the interest in photography just like me and my grandson, so we’re meeting up with him and his father next week to go out to the countryside to take some snaps. Overall, it was quite a good chance encounter.”
“Sounds like it. So what do you think of the style?”
Terry nodded. “It looks good. I’ll take these.”
“No problem,” said the assistant. “If you just follow me to the counter we can pay for them there and your new lenses and frames will be ready by the end of the week.”
The assistant walked swiftly off to behind the counter, passing some information to the young girl at the till. Terry took his time more and took a little longer to reach the other side of the till.
“That’ll be £30 for the appointment and £59.99 for the new glasses Mr Chamberlain,” the assistant said. Terry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather wallet. From this he pulled out a slightly tarnished debit card, which he was prompted to insert into the card reader on the desk by the assistant. The LED screen flickered into life and asked Terry for his PIN. The corners of his mouth curled as he entered the four digit number slowly and awkwardly before pressing enter. The machine rejected his PIN with a loud beep.
“Oh blast,” he said, “I always have trouble with these bloody things. Only yesterday I couldn’t get it to work when I went out for that meal with some friends. The bloody thing wouldn’t recognise my PIN number and I had to pay by cash. To be honest I can never read the numbers on the things what with my eyesight.”
He paused for a moment and entered another number. This too was rejected with a beep.
“Bloody thing.”
He tried again. It was rejected for a third time.
“Oh never mind. Can I pay by cash?”
“Certainly sir.”
Terry handed over five twenty pound notes and waited for his change.
“Yesterday wasn’t too bad though,” he commented, referring back to his previous thoughts. “I had to go to the cash machine to get some more cash out – that seemed to be happy with my number – and found someone had left their purse on the shelf. Luckily for them they had an address inside it so I could return it to them. The lady was quite chuffed to get it back and she’s invited me to lunch next week, so not half bad.”
The assistant rung the transaction through the till and put out her hand with the change. Terry looked at it and thought.
“You know what, I think I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “These glasses have helped me get £50, a day out doing something I love and a free lunch this week already. Maybe 20/20 vision is not all it’s cracked up to be. I think I’ll knock the new prescription on the head if that’s alright with you?” The assistant looked bemused, glancing over to her colleague, before cancelling the transaction and returning Terry’s £70. Terry smiled, wished them both a good day and left for the door.
The bell tinkled once more as he headed back out into the world to see what other adventures he could get up to with his not so perfect sight.
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