Sean Moncrieff: Please! Anything but the eyes!

The glasses-mask problem defeats me. On goes the mask and almost instantly I’m viewing the world through a white haze. Like I’m in a sauna and my eyeballs are sweating.

I hate the word eyeballs.

Yes, there are all sorts of anti-steam-up sprays and wipes that promise instant and lasting relief. I’ve tried many of them. They either don’t work at all or fail to after the first couple of times. I’ve tried wearing the glasses over the mask, or under the mask. I experimented with different sorts. Those with a nose clip work a little better, though it only delays the inevitable pea soup. My only comfort is that when mask deniers point and laugh at me, at least I can’t see them.

Half the time I’m reduced to wandering around with my glasses in my pocket, narrowly missing lampposts. Ignoring neighbours who might say hello.

New Zealand’s best red wines are elegant, light and very well made

---

Versatile reds for a springtime feast

---

Cauliflower Parmigiana: a hearty vegetarian main course to savour

---

Cauliflower Parmigiana

---

Of course, there’s an answer to this: contact lenses. But I’ve always had a major ick about sticking anything in my eyes. Why this is, I can’t tell you. It might be the many times I’ve witnessed people having to hunt around their eyeball – shudder – trying to find where the lens has got to: a process I always felt would end with their eye exploding from their head. And this may not be relevant, but many years ago, after a romantic interlude with an ex-girlfriend, I awoke in the night parched with thirst. I found a glass of water by my bedside and drank it. In the morning the ex-girlfriend couldn’t find her contact lenses. She’d left them in a glass of water.

It’s probably neither of these. Like a toddler who hates vegetables they’ve never eaten before, we all have fears that defy the balm of logic.

It explained the decline of my eyesight in the past year. It could have been something far worse

But the travails of this last year, plus my inability to see a lot of the time, forced me to reassess this phobia. It was time for me to pull on my Big Boy pants. After all, people wear contacts all the time without their retinas exploding. In the midst of a pandemic, other people have far more serious things to be worried about. And I needed an eye test anyway.

Even in non-mask situations, things had markedly deteriorated. Reading the opening credits on TV shows had become a struggle. Sometimes I couldn’t recognise characters who had been in previous scenes. During one drama, Herself gasped when a White Supremacist got a prison transfer. I scarcely believed it was the same person. To me he looked Mexican.

Confusing ethnicities is a very specific eye complaint, yet I chose not to mention it when I visited the optician. My focus – yes, I did that – was to man up and get contact lenses. Sadly, I must report that I failed to do so. It became somewhat irrelevant when the optician started explaining the cause of my vaguely racist eye complaint. I was developing cataracts.

Thanks, genetics: both my parents had them and my sister had the operation a few years ago. (And it’s not a condition exclusive to old people. So, you know, shut up.)

On the one hand, it is a relief. It explains the decline of my eyesight in the past year. It could have been something far worse. And it's an easy fix. The optician excitedly told me about a Japanese YouTube video where the eye-slicing procedure was completed in twenty-nine seconds. It's nice when someone has passion for their work.

But on the other hand, I’ve hopped from the frying pan into the skin-flaying lava pits of Hell. It took me a year to summon the courage to even consider sticking a benign piece of plastic in my eye. Now I face being strapped to a table while a surgeon rams a scalpel into my socket and gouges out the middle bit. At least that’s the way I imagine it. I haven’t watched the YouTube video. Nor will I.