vlad contact lens puncture

vlad and the puncture are today, the contact lens thing is yesterday and this morning...

so let's start with the contact lens thing...

yesterday as i put in my lens i noticed that one of them (the left one) had a very small knick in it but i didn't have time to get new ones out so i put it in intending to change the lens when i got home, i had my keyboard with me because we were rehearsing with T's band in the evening, i was also listening to each of the collaborative improvisation i've so far done on my ipod...

so i was travelling from shoreditch to kennington on the 133 bus around 7ish and i was pretty tired, the bus had been fairly empty but it was just about to get really busy, i rubbed my right eye a little too vigorously and suddenly i couldn't focus in that eye...

i started to look around me to see if i'd knocked out the lens somewhere and at that exact moment a crowd of people came in and i moved along my seat to let someone else sit down (hugging my keyboard stand)...

i asked the man who'd sat down to look at my eye and see if he could see my lens... he couldn't, it wasn't anywhere to be seen and if it had gotten on the floor it would have been all over anyway... london bus dirt...

so i had a psychedelic 10 minutes or so, listening to me & D's improvisation from a few weeks back and only being able to focus on one of my eyes and i started to realise that it must be still in there because looking down and left i could see a strange kind of shadow... so i got off the bus (a palaver indeed with my keyboard) and continued the strangeness that my journey had become walking to SLP...

i arrived and went straight into the toilet to look in the mirror and lo and behold my lens was still in there, folded over... i got it out, (also a palaver) unfolded it and put it back in, went about with the rehearsal...

only it wasn't happy about this and that eye was getting sore so i asked T if there was any contact lens solution around, which of course there wasn't... i decided to take it out and throw it away, i could possibly have kept it in water until i got home but carrying a glass of water, along with my keyboard from south to north london...?

anyway we rehearsed until quite late and i got the tube home, all with only one eye to focus with... once back at finsbury park it became clear that i should throw away the other lens (which had a knick in it anyway) and walk back to ours (but only for another 19 days) unfocussed and that is what i did ladies and gentlemen and it was lovely, i do like a bit of blurred at night time, so long as you know where you're going...

the added part of the story is that this morning i got hold of new ones (my last pair, once we've moved i'll have to get some new ones) and put them in, but once they were in i couldn't focus on anything, i blinked several times but the mist didn't clear until i worked out that i'd put both lens into the same eye... which i think i've done before and which is pretty spectacular...

ok, so briefly vlad, it had rained so the roads were wet and this is the classic time to get a puncture, on the way home from a brief stint at work this afternoon i could feel my back tire going down not too far from home, close though i was i decided to pretend that i wasn't to practise my roadside puncture repair...

i turned by bike up-side-down and set about trying to remove the outer tire... after 5 or perhaps 10 minutes of this with no visible results vlad came over to help, he has one of those jobs where you stand around a lot and he's from russia, he helped me get the outer tire off and find the puncture, also clearing the tiny bit of glass from the outer tire when we'd found the hole...

so much for my independent roadside puncture repair... anyway it got to the glueing stage and it became apparent that i didn't have any glue in either of the tubes of glue i had... so i had to carry the bike, still up-side-down, up hornsey road and through the andover estate to home before i could complete the operation... but the kindness of strangers ladies & gentlemen...? bless vlad...

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