Specsavers

Two weeks ago, my right contact was bothering me. So much so that I had to leave work to go home and take it out. I decided to be responsible and forgo my contact-​lens wearing for several days, thinking I’d scratched my eye. Well, a week later on Sunday, I tried putting in a new pair of contacts only to again experience the irritable eyes of contact-​lens anger.
Worried, I figured I should stop in to see an optician. My local Specsavers store (Liverpool Street) is not-​so-​handily closed on Sundays, so I cycled over to the Strand store at its opening time of 12pm. Unfortunately, I found the doors locked despite there being a guy inside sitting on a chair, staring at me bemusedly. He did nothing.
It was blazingly sunny outside. I was wearing my glasses. I was sweaty. And now annoyed.
Begrudgingly I got back on my bicycle, resigned to cycling home. But then I thought, ‘I know, I’ll just head down to Walworth’. Something you wouldn’t hear yourself uttering unless you too needed to see an optician on a Sunday. That is, unless you’re particularly into enthusiastic Baptist gospel music, which Walworth would seem to have an abundance of.
Well, the Walworth Specsavers exceeded my expectations. Not only did it have an enormous selection of spectacles on offer (my 3 previous local Specsaverses seemed to have a rather pitiful stock in comparison), but it had an optician on duty who was able to see me without an appointment, within a matter of 45 minutes.
The optician put some orange drops in my eyes, had me look up, down and to the side, and then — having not found anything curious — flipped my eyelids up.
That was weird.
But she discovered my problem. An eyelid infection, prescribed some eye drops, told me to come back in a week for a follow-​up. Perfect.
Oh, and I didn’t have to pay anything. Even better.
I might just have to make this my local Specsavers.