Which line is clearer P R E N T or F D R U G?

Or: 'Having your eyes tested'.

Which I did today. Eventually. I have been wearing glasses for a fair few years now (17), and I swear it has never taken me 90 minutes to get my eyes tested before. Ninety freakin' minutes! So, I arrive five minutes before my appointment like they told me to and the lady I speak to says "You've never been here before have you?" and I say "Yes, for the past six years". I'm not too surprised at this as the opticians that I use are famous for losing peoples records. So I sit down, and five minutes later I get called to check my details. They have my old address. This also is no surprise, after all I did only inform them of my change of address that one time. The same woman asks me "So, you've never been here before?" And I say "Yes" . This time I emphasize the "yes" so that she can really understand me. She asks me "Do you drive?", "Is there history of glaucoma in your family?", and "Is there history of diabetes in your family?". I answer the questions, I change my address (again), I go and wait.

Five minutes later I get called for a 'pre-test'. A what? A pre-test. Where they 'electronically measure your eyes' (for full effect you really should've read that in a Dr Evil voice). The pre-test man says "So, you've never been here before?" when I tell him through gritted teeth that I have he goes to find my records. He can't find them. He asks another woman who has helpfully taken my records out of the cupboard but not bothered to give them to anyone. Pre-test man comes back and takes magic pictures of my eyes with his magic machine. I go and wait. For thirty minutes. Then the optometrist (when did they stop being opticians?) comes to get me. I sit in the chair, and she says (with my records, all six years worth of them in front of her) - "So, have you been here before?". "Yes!!!". Then she asks me asks me "Do you drive?", "Is there history of glaucoma in your family", and the good old favourite "Is there a history of diabetes in your family?". I am not kidding. When the question asking is over I get my eyes tested. Those crazy green and red circles! They catch me out every time. So the long and shortsightedness of it is that my eyes are as rubbish as ever, but no more rubbish than before. Yey!

Then I go and wait for my contact lens test. I go in and a small boy who is obviously there without his mum knowing, is going to test my eyes. But before he does, he has some questions. Small boy optician asks me "Do you drive?", "Is there history of glaucoma in your family", and, you guessed it - "Is there history of diabetes in your family?". However I will forgive him for being the fourth person to ask me these questions when they have the answers in front of them, as he didn't laugh at me when I got my left and right mixed up. The answer to "Do you drive?" is "No", I hope that makes you all feel a bit safer. I was given some new-fangled ultra-modern space-age lenses to try for two weeks to make sure that I like them/they don't blind me. Anyhoo, I am at the counter explaining that this eyetest should be free as they cancelled my last one but 'forgot' to tell me, and so to keep me sweet they gave me freebies, when the woman says "Do you want to set up a direct debit now?" Excuse me? Do I want to give you my hard earned cash for lenses I haven't tried? NO! Then as she knows she isn't getting me to pay for lenses I may never have, she tries another tack. "Are you getting new glasses?". You can almost smell the desperation for commission in that place.

God, your fed up of reading this, I'm fed up of writing this, imagine how tedious it was actually being there. To cheer myself up I went to buy a new kettle. Beautiful.

P.S. If you're wondering how the pirate vs ninja party went, check out Booky B, she has it down to a tee.