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Ian Whitwam suffers from macular degeneration. He explains how his fading eyesight has affected his social life.

Ian Whitwam

I seem to be going blind.

"You’ve got Macular Degeneration", says the Doctor. I must eat Greens and zinc and something called ginko and wear shades. Otherwise the world will fade away. I surface blinking in the sun in dread and panic. Just like I’d felt in 1961....

I was playing football for Chalfont St Peter youth team - the Saints. I fancied myself as a bit of a midfield visionary. But I was having a nightmare. My velvet touch was gone, I’d missed an open goal and our manager was doing his nut in the dug out. I got subbed. Because my eyesight was going. Bus numbers, cricket balls, fractions - and now footballs - were getting blurred. I’d be out of the team.

I couldn’t face the truth. I even blagged the Eye Test. My father was an optician so I sneaked in and learned all the letters. I could do the bottom row. I had 20/20 vision. But not on the football pitch. I still blundered around. It wasn’t temporary. The manager had to drop me. It was one of the worst days of my life. My career was kaput. It was all I’d ever wanted to do.

I went back for a proper test. I gazed at the top row and then it became tadpoles and blurs and smudges. Mere hieroglyphics. Father pronounced me myopic, astigmatic - and a bloody fool - and pulled out a range of spectacles which would have condemned Marlon Brando to celibacy.

I had a choice between Chemistry Teacher or Serial Killer or Philip Larkin. I was trying to look like Elvis or Eddie at the time - they didn’t wear goggles. My romantic career was also kaput. Girls never made passes at boys who wore NHS glasses. I couldn’t be a footballer or rock’n’roll star - so I become a swot.

I didn’t wear them in public. This often often caused difficulties. Parties, for example, were problematic - or astigmatic. I lurched regularly into foggy intimacies with approximate girls - or boys or hat stands or plants. Once - for a bit of Dutch Courage - I glugged voraciously on a bottle of Olive Oil. It was the worst wine I’d ever tasted. A perk was that a lot of girls - or boys - resembled Juliette Greco or Francoise Hardy. I went on several if not blind then soft focus dates with these girls I might have met. These trysts were usually to the local Art House where I didn’t quite see classics of world cinema.

A later astigmatic tryst became the wife. I could have been been Warren Beatty. She could have been Natalie Wood. It was love at first blur. Only with severe optical corrections did we become Mr Magoo and Olive Oil.

Things have gradually got better. I eventually ‘came out’ with late Lennons or Roger McGuinn’s. And now it’s even cool to wear NHS or Larkins. But I still get the dread panics. And the nightmares get worse. ...there I am - a mid field visionary for QPR - or is it the Macular Degenerates? I get the ball. The goal yawns. Loftus Road goes hush. It all goes into slow motion.