CC 56: The Great Crested Grebe

The morning happened.  Crows sounded off, not the cockerels of sonic postcards; the crows seemed more honest these days as curtains were being drawn, a harsh truth drowning out the prettier songs of the community dunnocks and sparrows.  I had a big yawn which I enjoyed ever so much and got up to meet a mission that had been set in motion some months before – I’d been wearing a wonky pair of glasses for years, and in recent months, they’d snapped completely, so it was now time to get the replacement done. 

I’d been getting styes on and off, bits of redness and little folds around the eyes that gave some added uneasiness to how I looked, and it was the first thing the optometrist said to me as I was getting the new eye-test.

‘Oh, my, your eyes are pretty red, you know.  You look like a great crested grebe.  Have you had anyone see to this before?’ 

‘Nah, I’ve gotten them from time to time over the years.’

‘Right.  Some people are prone to them, for sure.  You should let some moisture in there regularly.’ 

‘I usually put a teabag on it.  I heard it works.’  It was a common thought that a used but still warm teabag over the eye was a good way to deal with styes.

‘Yeah, that’s okay.  Or just a warm wet cloth should do it.  You don’t want to be going around looking like that all the time.’

Shit, I didn’t think it looked that bad.

‘Are you stressed at work or anything?’ 

‘Ah….not really.’

‘It’s usually a stress thing, lack of sleep, or rubbing your eyes too much.’ 

‘I do.  I rub my eyes a lot.’

‘Well, you have to be careful with that.  Lots of germs build up over time.  Try not to rub your eyes if you can.’ 

‘Thanks.  But I’ll stick to the teabags anyway?’

‘Yeah, can do no harm.’ 

‘Good.  I like the feeling of a warm teabag on my face sometimes.’

The optometrist looked at me curiously when I said this, but then laughed.

I realised later that my comment might have sounded funny to those people who knew the practice of teabagging in the world of sexual adventure, and I imagined the optometrist later sharing my embarrassing slip with his boyfriend and laughing to themselves at dinner, but maybe that was a stretch.  Anyway, I said it, and he adopted the curious look, so something was out there to be mulled over with regards my red eyes.  Herpes.  Teabags.  Take your pick.

 After all the testing and selecting of frames had been done, I went to collect the new pair of specs and then decided to go to the library to look at Kate the librarian with them; ah, nothing creepy now, I just wanted to see how her loveliness would develop through the new lenses.  Would she appear more wonderful or less?  Who knows?  But she wasn’t there – maybe her day off.  Shite.

I hung around the library for a while anyway and picked out some old books I thought it would be nice to see through this renewed vision of the world.  I chose Robert Kee’s The Most Distressful Country, Essential Works of John Stuart Mill, and the Kingfisher Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland.  As I sat down and turned my freshened view of the world to what Mill had to say about the utility of religion, I spotted the fat pigeon racer sleazing between the shelves checking to see if anyone was watching before he stole more pictures of owls.  There was nobody to catch him with Kate gone.  I was the only one who was on to his shenanigans.  You could say I was the one eagle-eyed witness to criminality that day, but I wasn’t.  The eyes of a great crested grebe were right now chasing that owl all over the library, up and down shelves of Shelley, through the gaps left by borrowed Agatha Christie’s, around the portentous pillars of all knowledge – this grebe could give the hawks a run for their money.  In the end however, the owl flew off, and all was quiet again.  Peace was restored to the library and the grebe’s eyes returned to the dignity of study.

 I took my new glasses off, and rubbed my eyes.  The utility of religion was taking its toll.