Free No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year by Virginia Ironside Page A

am deluged with ads for Viagra and penis enhancement, not to mention desperate requests for money from Nigerians. This is the latest, which I rather liked:
     
    Minister Charles Simpson has the power to make you a
LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within forty-eight hours!
    WEDDINGS
    MARRY your BROTHER, SISTER, or your BEST FRIEND!
    Don’t settle for being the BEST MAN OR BRIDESMAID
    FUNERALS
    A very hard time for you and your family
    Don’t settle for a minister you don’t know!
    BAPTISMS
    You can say “WELCOME TO THE WORLD! I AM YOUR
MINISTER AND YOUR UNCLE!”
    What a special way to welcome a child of God
    WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH??
    After your LEGAL ORDINATION, you may start your own
congregation!
    Since I know how much you want to help others, you’re going to receive your Minister Certification for under $100.00…Not even $50.00…You are going to receive the entire life-changing course for only $29.95.
    For this you will receive:
8-inch by 10-inch certificate in color, with gold seal (Certificate professionally printed by an ink press)
Proof of Minister Certification in your name
Shipping is free
    How about getting a certificate and then, during the christening of this little person, suddenly bursting out with: “Welcome to the world! I am your minister and your grandmother!”
    Perhaps not.
    Feb 19
    Went to optician’s. At sixty, I now have free eye tests—brilliant!—but rather irritatingly, being sixty, my sight barely changes (except at night and in front of the computer). So just at the time you don’t need them, you get them for nothing. Typical. When I arrived, the man behind the counter, the nephew of Mr. Ahmed, who runs the shop, was complaining about the smell of drains. As far as I could make out, the manhole for the drains for the entire block of flats above opens in the basement of the optician’s. Mr. Ahmed himself came up looking very peeved, rubbing his hand as if he’d had a nasty encounter with a piece of slime, or worse, down there.
    He tested my eyes and told me that my sight hadn’t changed at all—but, he revealed gleefully, he could see cataracts growing already. He gave me the news as if he’d spotted the first crocuses coming up in spring. I felt a bit depressed. Then I got cross, because if my sight hasn’t changed, why can’t I see?
    I’ve never been really able to see with my present glasses. I can’t see the words on my computer screen unless I crane my neck right back. I have tried sitting on piles of cushions, so the computer is lower than me. I have tried putting dozens of ancient Victorian volumes of Punch underneath the monitor to raise it, but nothing makes any difference. Mr. Ahmed says the problem could be one of two things. First, it could be floaters. Certainly, so many dark floaty shapes pass my eyes I sometimes feel as if I am walking through an autumn forest in a storm. Or, more likely, it could be that the line of midvision is bad because of the fashionably tiny glasses I have.
    Mr. Ahmed and his nephew stared at my line of vision, made marks with a special pen on my glasses, garbled optical jargon to each other and finally said that if I were to pay £575 for a new pair I would be able to see perfectly well. I gulped. No reaction. Then I gulped again, more loudly. Nothing. Finally I said: “Golly, that’s frightfully expensive!” and got a result.
    “For you, £500,” said Mr. Ahmed’s nephew.
    It is still “Cripes!”, however much money they take off.
    When I left I had a sudden thought: Could the smell in the drains be due to all the old cataracts they flush down them? Yuk.
    I then went to Sainsbury’s to buy some fish, and some special food they do that Pouncer likes. At least, he liked it last week. It’s funny with cats. They’ll refuse to eat anything but Whiskas Turkey in Gravy for about three months and then, just as you buy a whole crate of it wholesale, they’ll suddenly turn up their nose at it and eat nothing but Sainsbury’s Select