I believe it was a gentleman called Karel Fialka who sang ‘The Eyes Have It.’ A bouncy and jaunty enough little pop song from the tired and straining arse end of the nineteen seventies. I actually liked it, as a thirteen year old who was just taking his first tentative steps into the realm of heavy metal and all things Black Sabbath. But that’s not where I’m going with this.

Eyes, the windows to the soul. Subject matter for poets, bards and balladeers alike throughout the centuries from time immemorial. Without doubt the most expressive organs in the entire human body. The eyes convey more emotion with just one glance than the rest of the body put together. We can tell if a person is happy, sad, angry, lying etc etc just by looking into their eyes. We can also tell when someone is intoxicated or off their tits on ketamine or cocaine too. Very handy for the boys in blue.

My eyes, however, are a deplorable and shabby mess dear reader. Plagued with blepharitis and looking like they belong to a hungover sow that’s spent the whole night making piglets and now needs a good lie in followed by some strong, caffeine laced swill, they resemble nothing more than hooded razor-made slits in my face that peer at the world through a myopic blur where everything comes in twos or has a shadow.

And, as a perfect and complete fool, I’ve put up with it for far too long. I last had an eye test in 2014 at the Shipley branch of Specsavers. And it was great, for a while. But after an alarmingly short amount of time I began to lose my focus, developed headaches and stopped wearing the glasses they sold me because it was just so much easier to not wear them. What a berk!

My eyesight has deteriorated much since then to the point where driving has become a terrifying, anus-clenching ordeal and menus have to be decoded to me as if they were in hieroglyphics. And so in my new spirit of self care I decided that things had gone too far and that new spectacles were in order. Thus, I hastened forth to Boots Opticians in Keighley last week and underwent a very, and I mean very, thorough eye test.

The long and the short of it is that – I CAN SEE!!!

I now have two, lightweight pairs of glasses (distance and reading) that I am overjoyed with and it’s like a whole new lease of life. I no longer have to squint and stand near a window to read instructions on food packaging. I no longer have to be told by my granddaughter what such and such a road sign says. I no longer have to avoid watching films with subtitles (no, not just because they’re French). I can now appreciate the natural world and my surroundings to the full, as God intended it to be.

And of course, as a writer and avid reader the benefits are unending.

So my advice to you all is simply this – get your bloody eyes tested. Seriously, if you are having even the slightest difficulty with them, get your ass down to Boots, Specsavers, Vision Express or any good independent optician and get yourself sorted out. Trust me, your world will be a much safer, happier and more beautiful one, as mine now is.

As Mr Fialka sang all those years ago, the eyes truly do have it.