Eyes

My daughter Melanie and I went to Kendal to get her squinty eyes sorted out, before the best health service in the world is privatised. "Your eyes are so wonky I can't measure them with my instruments," said the consultant a few weeks ago. Melanie was up early to enjoy the illicit feel of her day off school.

It was a half hour walk to the hospital, a glare of grey sky and still cold as we got off the train at Oxenholme. Jarring modern houses with white uPvC windows refused to fit in.

In the waiting room, we read flowery magazines about recipes and accepting your boobs. The virus of canned music has spread to the reception area of Westmorland General Hospital. A long wait, then the ophthalmologist called us in.

"Hello, I'm Mr Neill", he said, shaking her twelve-year-old hand. "And is this your father?", a wittily conspiratorial way of making Melanie know that I was but a third party. Drawn in with his manners, his unkempt prematurely balding hair, his expensive but worn yellow-brown shoes, his clashing purple knitted tie, I felt the feeling that is the beginning of something that, on a very few occasions, ends in snogging.

He showed us a model of the eye, showing us what he'll be doing. It was arranged for the first day of term in January. We signed consent forms and walked into Kendal. Pie and chips in a pub, then, with still an hour to kill before the train, we ran up the ruins of Kendal Castle and saw the hole through which lordly shit was delivered in 1500. We found a teenage couple smoking and drinking from tinnies in one of the old wine cellars. "This is the best party venue in Kendal, isn't it?" I said. I saw Melanie slightly shrink from them, then trying to correct her body with politeness.

In the evening, Denise's birthday. Five of us in a hard-lit pub; separating, too-wide tables quashing intimacy. Very little drinking; and a melancholic air which refused to leave. Henry, who wanted to talk about his recent break-up, asked me for a "cordial". I haven't heard that word as a noun for years. "That's a bit of a vague answer," I said in response to something one of the girls said. She didn't know what to do with her face. "I..." (laugh), "I don't like to talk about myself."

I wanted to talk about Mary-Ann, but in the face of such reticence I thought it would be wasted; neither did I want to underline Henry's feeling of aloneness. Denise asked me about her, and I kept it light and brief, before turning my face to the others to indicate that I'd like a new subject.

As we left the pub, Lancaster was full of students loudly trying to find an authenticity through shouting.

Those of a literary bent might like to consider joining me and some other people at An und für sich in an online book group to read and discuss William Gass's debut novel of 1966, Omensetter's Luck. Follow the link for the book's enthusiastic advocacy and a blog which wanders interestingly between philosophy, theology, and politics.