"Yes, I am blind,

No, I cant see

The good things,

Just the bad things..."

Honestly, that Morrissey - such a misery...

Well, in this world of here-and-now, in front of me - I can see.

Always a bonus.

After a weekend of being asked:

How did it feel? Did it hurt? Did you smell burning?

Well, swiftly, in reverse order: NO!, Sort-of, and... trippy.

For all and any squeamishness, shivers and shakes at the prospect of merely-local anaesthetic, scooping and spearing and ZZZZAP-ing of gooey eyes, the worst was actually the three-plus hours I had to sit, silent, waiting in the, er, waiting room of a Harley Street previously patronised, according to grinning photos on the walls, by "Dr" Neil Fox.

Now that's scientific fact...

Finally, after having devoured every last word of both The Independent and The Daily Mail (how's that, for keeping my eyes in balance, rrright?), I was ushered into a surgeon's handshake, then back on my back, chin-straight-please-keep-your-chin-STRAIGHT, glasses cast aside for the last time, my right eye doused with dozing-fluid, then clasped and clamped into place, eyelids taped back (easy how you tear, now, I've been growing'n'grooming these eyelashes specially...), until all I see is an insistent orange glow like a pussy-willow wriggling aggressively towards me, fighting off the blackness that's increasingly enveloping all... and this is uncomfortable, even ache-y, even actually really rather painful, but it'll be over soon, it'll be over soon... and suddenly, out of the black, loops of light, multi-coloured rings around the swoon, a little boy's kaleidoscope, an expense-spared Pink Floyd stage show.

Only accompanied by a metronomic clack-clack like a slowly-surely old-fashioned football rattle; sparks spitting from an optician's dentist's drill...

Red, yellow, orange. Over.

Now the other...

And suddenly, I'm in another room, all dark but a pin-sharp clock on the wall - until the eyes, filling and refilling with water, saltwater, have to shutter down again under shades...

Little elements of detail squeeze in every so often, but I'd rather spend the car journey home buried in my own shrug, then tape curtains to the windows and while away these crucial 12 hours in goggles, under a shroud, only hearing - drifting in, drifting out, drifting in again - old episodes of On The Hour or Baker and Kelly (the whistle-less ref who had to officiate with a harmonica, the knitted Steve Sedgley voodoo doll, Iain Dowie as Earthworm Jim...), with the rest of the weekend's choreography of strategic eyedrops, squinting and every-so-often rejoicing at the sheer off-clear, but mostly-there gift of sight.

That'll do, for now. Let's call it 17/20 vision, maybe 18 in a good moment.

For you, my friend, 18-and-a-half.

Ask me again next week, I'll see your question a mile away...

(I, like the rest bar the ref, could still see the winker dived, of course...)