NAKED WITH A CANARY By Kate Gostick After leaving university, I worked as an optician sometimes in Sheffield, but mainly in Rotherham. The Sheffield practice may have been in the wrong part of town, but when I worked in Rotherham, the whole town was in the wrong part of town!
R
otherham had the highest incidence of mental illness in Britain, and I tested the eyes of all the people who made that statistic a reality. They may have been totally crazy, but they were all so kind and funny, not an evil bone in their bodies. When it was cold or raining hard, all the drunks who sat drinking cider behind Tesco’s, many of whom were homeless, would book an eye test just to have half an hour in a warm place. Many were on income support, so they did not have to pay, making it was win-win for them. They were troubled souls, but harmless and sweet-hearted. One once asked me out on a date to
158
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
Blackpool and offered to take me to the tower ballroom and dance with me all night. I politely declined, and so he swept me up in his arms and waltzed me around the room. Every day brought new surprises. When an elderly lady came in for her eye test, in her hand was a bright red umbrella still wet from the constant rain that fell on the declining mining town. She was dressed smartly in a blue coat, buttoned up to her neck to keep out the biting Yorkshire winds, and a felt hat protected her neat grey hair from the weather. I asked her to take a seat in the big chair and leave all her things on the smaller chair whilst I just took some forms downstairs. As I opened the door, I expected to see her seated in the consulting chair, ready to start the examination, and she was indeed sitting in the correct chair. Folded neatly on the smaller chair in the corner was her coat and sitting on top of the umbrella and hat just as I expected. What I hadn’t expected was that under the coat, folded just as www.lancmag.com
