Top of the pops.

So in a 1980’s Top of the pops stylee, I am going to list the top 10 most frustrating and somewhat difficult things that I have found since becoming the proud owner of my new temporary eye. Hold tight folks, this is going to be exhilarating….*

*Disclaimer, I cannot be found responsible if you do not find this list exhilarating….

• Dropping 5 places to 10 – Shoes being left at the bottom of the stairs, middle of the floor or even tucked In by the bottom of the kitchen cupboards. I cannot tell you how many times I have stumbled and trip over a pair of shoes. I would like to lay the blame wholly on my children but unfortunately I can’t. Mr Me-myself-and-Eye is a prime suspect and actually is particularly fond of leaving his shoes next to a small stool pushed ever so slightly and subtly into a place which is a prime trip hazard… I wonder if he has checked out our life insurance recently… I think the ONLY reasonable answer to this problem is to donate the obscene number of trainers that we have to other people… like a shoe cleanse…. I mean who actually needs 50 billion pairs of trainers?!
• New in at 9 (although has been drifting around the outside of the top 10 for a while) – Being asked to look at something written or drawn really really small on a piece of paper whilst I am at one end of a room/driving/in another room and then made to pass comment on the writing/drawing…this especially happens when I’m in the car and I literally have to swivel my neck 180 degrees (Chucky stylee) to look at anything directly behind me (anyone not familiar with the character of Chucky, google it…. in the middle of the day when you are at work…. not at home when you are on your own… at night….) To be fair, this was a frustrating trait that my chiblets had before ‘eye gate’…. I mean, there is only so many ways you can say ‘ooooh great job guys… what is it?’ In a way that doesn’t crush their hopes and dreams of becoming an artist or best selling author…I particularly love it when they do this to me when I am at a Roundabout…. in the rain…. in rush hour… defs the best time to be asking…. which brings me to…
• Down 2 places at 8 – Drivers…. or driving in general….I don’t know if this has always been the case but I am certainly noticing it more now that drivers are aggro! Prime example is at Roundabouts (usually when the chiblets are asking me to look at something as stated above) you pause for more than a nano second and people (usually men -just my observation and not a generalisation that all men are aggro drivers) are swerving around me to go straight on….. or god forbid I pause to let people finish crossing the road when the amber lights are flashing….and sometimes I think that people must be soooo keen to see where I am going that have to drive within about 6 inches of my back bumper so as not to lose me…. usually when I am going dead on the speed limit…. they must just be super impressed with how I maintain the speed limit whilst belting out Madonna (pre eyepatch Madonna obvs)
• Staying at 7 – Steps that are the same colour as the floor. If I had a pound for the amount of times I have not seen or misjudged a step up or down, I would be about £59 richer. Usually the stumble happens and I turn it into a graceful couple of jogging steps as if to say ‘I totes meant to do that’ …. although the little squeak that precedes the jogging steps may give the game away… it’s just annoying.
• A non mover at 6 – Crowds, and when I say crowds I mean anywhere with over 3 people. When I’m in the playground at school it panics me… it’s overrun by small children darting around me, appearing from the left hand side as if they have apparated like something from Harry Potter….this has actually become worse since the patch has come off because people don’t realise that I still can’t see… it makes my head fuzzy and I feel dizzy…. a bit like being drunk but without the good time before it…. it also makes sounds much louder…. It’s my new super power…. ‘bat ears….’
• At 5 – Flat light, overly sunny, rain, dappled light – falling over in front of a van full of blokes, I’m just too embarrassed to expand on this one….
• Staying strong at 4 – Empty toilet paper rolls, empty milk cartons in fridge, packets going back in the cupboard with 1 thing in…. again this has absolutely nothing to do with my eye or the cancer…. it’s just highly irritating…
• A new entry at 3 (and nothing really to do with ‘the eye’) my mum’s new shower. Let me expand on this. My mum and dad have a new fancy pants shower that doesn’t have a trusty twisty ‘on and off’ and temp control knob, but it has a digital unit with 4 buttons numbered 1-4. Buttons numbered 1 and 2 control which shower head turns on (they are that fancy they have two) one is a regular on the wall shower head and the other is a dangerous looking silver sphere that sits above you head, just waiting….. I think that whoever created this shower contraption did it knowing full well that no one would remember which number button works which shower head unit.
• Anyway, the first time I used the shower after a lovely rainy run around Harrogate (remember the run of death that Mr me-myself -and -Eye took me on on Mother’s Day?) As I was heading up to the shower my mum casually said “you know how to work the shower don’t you? Just press the button”…. famous last words. So there I was standing in the shower, faced with 4 button options. A game of Russian roulette, but the steaks are either a warm blast of water from the normal regular shower head, or an ice cold dunking from the ‘sphere of doom’ overhead. I took a deep breath, stuck my finger out and pressed button number 2. As soon as I pressed it, I realised my error. The gurgling of the water shot up the pipes and passed the normal shower head…. At that point life went into slow motion and my desperate lurch for the door was pointless (I have to point out that the shower is encased in a glass box and not that easy to see the escape hatch which made my attempt at an escape pointless) I shouted out ‘nooooooooooooooo’ and tried to blend into the glass door to avoid the inevitable artic water dump that was about to happen, but nothing could stop it. The ice cold water hit my head and engulfed me. Spluttering and swearing I reached over and pressed NUMBER 1, vowing to not only always remember to press NUMBER 1 but to always buy a shower with a twisty knob (and to bring down the company who created such a sadistic shower contraption.)
• A non mover at 2 – Dogs when running…. I mean this is fairly similar to number 6 and crowds…where children dart around me…. The main difference is that dogs are at the perfect trip hazard height and give no warning they are about to stop directly in front of me or run over to have a sniff of my legs (or embarrassingly, crotch) when you are going full pelt, or suddenly turn on their trajectory right into you from the left hand side like a ninja….
• And at number one, where it has stayed for the past 4 weeks -‘The eye’ falling out. On the occasions it has happened It has generally been when the chiblets have been around (except that hideous 1st time) and so I have not been able to break down in a mini meltdown before instilling the ‘deepbreath, left eyelid, shove and hope for the best’ technique to return the eye to the socket. It has a tendency to happen pre 8am, I guess as my body is waking up and so I wonder if this is a factor… to be fair, it doesn’t matter when it happens, the event will stay at number 1 until it stops happening!

So that is my top 10 folks, I hope you enjoyed it!

Until next time!

CCx