Clearer vision, cloudy logistics

MTM’s appointment finally came through for cataract surgery on his first eye. As I’d be driving him home afterwards, we sensibly decided to do a trial run to the hospital the Sunday before, just to familiarise me with the route. 

I don’t enjoy driving on the A1 (those slip roads feel alarmingly short), so we took the A15 instead. We got to Peterborough absolutely fine, turned round in the hospital car park ... and congratulated ourselves on being very organised. 

On the way back, steam started pouring out of the back of the MGf. I hadn’t noticed the temperature gauge climbing because I was concentrating on unfamiliar roads, but a kindly MX-5 driver alerted us to the dramatic plume behind us. 

I pulled into a supermarket car park and called the AA. They arrived in about an hour, during which time we bought sandwiches from the supermarket - not quite the Sunday lunch we’d planned, but needs must. 

The AA man suspected a faulty coolant cap. He topped us up with water, did a pressure test, and said we should be OK to drive home, provided we got the cap replaced ASAP. It was a good job we stopped when we did; much further and we’d have been looking at a very expensive engine problem. We're very grateful to the fellow roadster driver who went out of his way (literally) to help us avoid disaster. 

We bought five litres of water (just in case) and I drove home watching the temperature gauge like a hawk. Mercifully, we made it back without further drama. What we didn’t do was trust the MG to get us to the hospital on surgery day. 

There was nothing for it but for me to drive MTM’s extremely reliable Lexus. Just one small problem: it’s an automatic. I have never driven an automatic car, but needs must when the devil drives — and on the Monday before the operation I embarked on an intensive course in how to forget my left leg. It all went remarkably well. I now don’t know why I was ever nervous about automatics; they’re much easier than manuals. 

The last time MTM coached a manual driver through the transition (one of his mates), there were a couple of unexpected emergency stops as muscle memory kicked in and he tried to change gear by stamping on the brake. I’m pleased to report no such incidents with me. MTM’s former life as a driving instructor came in very handy. I took to it like a duck to water, though it did take me a while to get used to slowing down without using the gears — I hadn’t realised how much I rely on them as a kind of speedometer. 

Meanwhile, the MG went off to our usual garage. They replaced the water with proper coolant and booked it in for further investigation, which it’s undergoing today. They don’t think it’s the coolant cap. Fingers crossed it isn’t too painful for the wallet. 

Now for the important bit. MTM has now had one eye done. In the end it was a 12-week wait rather than the 16 we were warned about, and he now has a shiny new lens in his left eye. Once the cloudiness and gritty sensation cleared (about five days), he was amazed by the colours. His right eye still sees the world through a sepia-tinted cataract — he describes it as “pub haze”, from the days when smoking was still allowed indoors. In his left eye, whites are now as dazzling as those in a Peter Crouch advert. Blues and silvers, in particular, are startlingly bright. 

At his follow-up appointment yesterday, the consultant confirmed he's cleared to drive again. The downside? He’s gone straight back to the bottom of the list for his second eye, with another 16-week wait looming. This is especially galling when friends elsewhere have had their second eye done within a week or two of the first. 

The NHS used a private hospital for MTM’s operation - apparently this is increasingly common to help reduce waiting lists. As the nurse explained the delay for the second eye, we were sitting right next to a sign advertising cataract surgery for £2,750 (or £65 a month) with no waiting time at all. Is it terribly cynical of me to wonder whether that sign was there by design? 

Still - one eye down, one to go. We’ll keep the Lexus fuelled, the MG under observation, and our sense of humour firmly intact. The next episode of this saga will no doubt cover the adventures of MTM's right eye, a gradual return to full-colour living, and whether the garage can restore our faith in the MG’s (usually quite good) reliability.