I was back at the opticians on Friday, for a followup. What I had expected to be 10 minutes turned out to be a bit longer, with a good check made with the lenses, and the condition of my eyes. Thankfully I’d anticipated things by taking my glasses, which I needed after the process. I was quite impressed by the thoroughness of things and the last stage involved a very small quantity of yellow dye in each eye.

The result of the process was identification of a wee problem with my eye lashes, so I’ve got to treat them each day with a lukewarm solution of five parts water to one of baby shampoo, applied with a cotton bud. My lenses are to go up in strength too, not that I’m used to their current settings but they are going up a point, or a digit. And I’m back in two weeks for another progress check.

The fascinating side effect of the process was that the bogeys in my right nostril went a shade of yellow. I’ve been pondering that since. I’m sure it tells me something.

I was able to get out on the bike while wearing them and they are really the business. So much easier than the shuffle with spectacles when putting the helmet on and off, and I was a lot more comfortable without view steaming up. I had a ride over to Hamilton to check out J&S Accessories. An excellent shop, by far the biggest stock of motorcycle clothing I’ve seen in Scotland. Good for choice and budget. I didn’t buy anything, but found clothing in my size. Shoes and helmet were more of a problem, I’ll need to do some more searching to find a helmet big enough that I can try before I buy.

The ride over was another opportunity for practice. I know the roads fairly well, but not on the bike so the run on the motorway was good experience. I also worked on some of the points picked up in my riding assessment, but need a bit of time to knock the points off one by one.