For the last 12-18 months I have been effectively monocular which is fine, really. My other eye works a treat and my Quality Of Life has not been much affected.

The main problems I've had have been when playing sport. My favoured summer pastime involves judging the flight of a ball hurled at you from 20m away and with only one eye it is much harder to determine the pace of it. Another facet of the game involves trying to get some part of your body behind a ball travelling at speeds that would be illegal on any highway in the country — over turf that hasn't seen a drop of rain since 2004 — I have found this harder with only half the average number of eyes.

Last year, my brother organised for me to take an introductory flying lesson. It was unbelievably awesome. The instructor gave me a lecture about the mechanism of flight and the controls on the aircraft and then we did a pre-flight check of the light aircraft and then we jumped in and he said “here's your throttle. Push it up. Here's the yoke. Pull it back when your speed is above this,” and I pushed it up and pulled it back and I had taken an aircraft off the ground. It was the coolest. We flew around a beautiful valley east of Melbourne on a perfect, still morning: the Sugarloaf dam to the north, the Dandenongs to the south. I was doing turns and climbing and diving. The feeling of being in control while flying through the air! was an utter treat. I, as you may gather, loved the flight. I urge everybody who reads this to find a flying school at your nearest airfield and try it.

To progress from the introductory lesson to get a pilot's license requires a physical certificate and the doctor could not give me one because of my eye. Bugger.

Surgery will be in May. This morning my ophthalmologist, who has been closely following my progress, was pleased to announce that my cataract was now “quite a bad one” which I thought was fantastic. No puny, wimpy-ass cataracts for me. I will get that removed and, get this, I get to have an intraocular lens implant! How groovy does that sound! Glee!

¶ 1:00 pm