Looking back, it almost feels like a good third of my past blogs have been explanations and excuses for why reviews seem to have slowed up or ground to a halt, usually due to family or medical issues. The last blog on this score was a bit of a doozy, but thankfully my partner’s health scare has since been brought medicinally under control, and I’m finally free of the lingering effects of my appallingly timed bout of Covid. All once again seemed relatively fine on the health front. Then, a couple of weeks ago, something happened out of the blue that impacted directly my ability to write about films and even to watch them. Seriously, even this short blog has taken me most of the day to commit to RAM. Why? Ah…

To set the scene I should note that I have had to wear glasses for reading and computer work for several years now, and usually have to buy a new pair every couple of years or so as my vision further weakens with age. Apart from that, my eyesight is generally fine, but a fortnight ago, that unexpectedly changed, and it did so with peculiar suddenness.

When I went to bed on the night of Tuesday 14 May, my eyesight was as it had been for several years. When I opened my eyes on the Wednesday morning, however, I seemed to have four hands and four feet, and could not bring anything into anything like sharp focus. Eventually, this settled down a little, but getting a clear view of anything took considerable effort. If I looked downwards or to the left, the double vision I experienced was dramatic, presenting me with two images of the same objects a good metre apart from each other. Being aware that double vision in either or both eyes can be a warning sign of something potentially serious, I did a quick check, and it immediately became clear that my eyes were simply failing to align. The fact that I was experiencing pressure pain behind and above the right eye seemed to indicate that it was the main culprit.

When this failed to settle down over the next couple of days, I made an appointment to have my eyes checked at my regular optician, and one thorough examination later the optician assured me that a new set of corrective lenses should enable me to see things clearly again. As I would apparently now need three separate pairs of glasses with different lenses – one for reading, one for computer work, and a third for distance viewing – I’ve opted to give varifocals a try for the first time (they’re cheaper than three individual pairs and I have 90 days return them if I don’t get on with them), but these are taking quite a while to produce, though I apparently should have them in the next few days. Here’s the thing, though. When I asked the optician why a such a deterioration in my vision would happen overnight, she was clearly stumped and admitted that this would normally be a far more gradual process. I’m thus now waiting for an appointment with my GP, which on evidence of the last one should be in about three weeks (another poisoned gift from this wretched and thankfully soon to be ex-government) to investigate whether there is indeed an underlying cause.

As someone whose home and work life revolves around his vision, this whole thing has given me a serious scare, and suddenly the glasses I’ve been using for the past two years for reading and computer work are next to useless, at least for the originally intended purpose (don’t worry, I’m coming back to that). And try typing at any speed when there are two misaligned copies of the text on screen and double the number of keys on the keyboard. Every time I type even the simplest sentence, I have to go back and correct a string of errors due to hitting the wrong key, or perhaps just the wring version of the two keys I can see. Perhaps because this rattled me so much, it failed to dawn on me that I could get round the problem simply by covering one eye, but this still feels weirdly disorientating after so many years of having two at my disposal. It also completely sabotages my depth perception, playing merry hell with a selection of previously simple tasks (who knew cutting your toenails could be such a challenge?). Curiously, the glasses that I previously used for reading now enable me to see the TV more clearly instead. This at least means I can now watch movies again, although the vertical double vision still intermittently persists, gracing actors with a second pair of eyes in their foreheads.

All of this has completely thrown my planned disc coverage schedule, and I now have a significant pile of review discs from the likes of Indicator, Radiance and Eureka that I had every intention of covering but have not yet even watched. Making matters worse is a huge increase in the workload and some impossible deadlines at my daytime job, work that is also computer-based. With my vision as it is, this is proving both physically taxing and stressful, and is taking far longer than normal to complete and eating into my evenings as a result. The consequence of this is that I’ve been working on a single bloody review of a Radiance Blu-ray for over a week now, with pauses to post reviews from the still highly productive Gary Couzens (cheers, man) and the occasional news story. I’m hoping that when the new glasses arrive, they will bring my computer monitor back into workable focus and ease the double vision, and when I finally get to see my GP, maybe he will be able clarify why this shift in vision has so suddenly occurred. I also only have four more days of madness at work before I’m on leave for a week, by when I hope to have the new glasses and can hopefully start easing the backlog a little.