I Can See Clearly Now

After decades of abusing his eyesight by staring at a screen, Mel Croucher is seeing the world through new eyes, thanks to a Chinese doctor and the miracle of technology

- Mel Croucher

COMPUTERS HAVE RUINED my eyesight. A dimmer switch has been applied to the world, which has itself become more and more out of focus, and those floaty things and zig-zag patterns are no longer amusing.

It’s my own fault, of course. I spent 50 years slouched in front of a screen, peering at pixels and absorbing the damage they cause. Those early cathode ray tubes fried my retinas with radiation and beta rays. Then I allowed TFT displays to bombard my eyeballs with charged dust particles. And I embraced ultrawide screens as soon as they hit the market. What I mean is, I threw my arms around them and physically embraced them for hours on end.

These days I can transfer gunk directly into my orbital sockets thanks to touchscreens and an eye-rubbing reflex. The greater the retinal display, the greater the retinal decay. And I have written many articles about the hazards of staring into screens for a living, but I have never taken the slightest bit of notice anything I advised you lot about.

ADVICE SQUAD

You know how it goes; never view less than an arm’s length away, take a break at least once an hour, minimise reflections and excessive sunlight, adjust background lighting, brightness and contrast to match your surroundings, increase font size, blink like an owl, walk like a man, and all that other sensible stuff. I never took a blind bit of notice.