Old-fashioned skills

The opthalmologist apologised for repeatedly shining his bright light in my eye: he was drawing my optic nerve. With a pen. On paper. I was reminded of a series of French postcards, Les p'tits métiers d'autrefois, the skilled jobs that no longer exist, like the pupitreur who walked the cellar of the champagne house, giving each bottle a quarter turn and a slight increase in angle each day (to move the sediment gradually into the neck). Now I suppose postcards themselves are on the way to obsolescence. But the opthalmologist still draws by hand.

That was the best bit of the consultation. The bad news is that my left eye is no longer responding as well to the drops as it was: we will try a different kind of drops, and see if that helps. The good news is that my left eye is still fine (fortunately, since it's the one that does all the work.)

After this, durham_rambler took me - still blinking in the daylight - to TKMaxx, because he thought we should buy some pillows: he's quite right, and long overdue, but I don't know what provoked him to do it today. And then we went to Aldi, and bought things for lunch, and a variety of seasonal treats. Aldi is fun, but Lidl has an in-store bakery. so Lidl wins.