I had my eyes tested the other week, and now I have funky new glasses that make me look like an ad exec or the director of a fringe arty theatre piece. I know, I'm finding it hard not to punch myself in the face on a daily basis. But it only occurred to me over the weekend, while killing time in Liverpool for three days (I was hoping to spend the 3 days watching the new Indiana Jones film again and again, but I watched it once and never want to see it again), that the sight test I had was different from the old days. And it took two weeks to realise why...

I had a sudden realisation, when passing a Dollond and Aitchison on Sunday (I should never have eaten it), that the familiar sight test - the one with the massive letter at the top, then three on the next row, and so on - was made up this time of only a handful of letters. In my youth I remembered that the letters never repeated themselves (which was a way of cheating in itself - how could that little letter be a Z, when we had a Z on the previous line...?). But this new version had a bunch of As, a few Os, a T or two... Then it dawned on me:

They only use letters that look the same when mirrored and not mirrored.

I'm sure that didn't deserve its own paragraph, but in order to make this blog dramatic, I have to ask how Dan Brown would write it.

So, opticians nowadays - who of course view the back-to-front version of the sight test, cos they don't have a mirror to look in to read it - don't want to have to interpret mirrored letters. Probably some open letter was sent to the Journal of Optometrists (inevitably called 'Looking Forward' or 'Life Through A Lens' or something), complaining about the basic human right to be able to read letters that aren't mirrored in one's workplace. So the powers-that-be responded by making these sight tests much much easier by only using letters that baffle a mirror's attempts to confuse them.

So next time you go, you'll probably find it's all As, Hs, Is, Ms, Ns, Os, Ts, Us, Vs, Ws, and Xs. And if you're stuck and wondering if that's a T or an F, it's a T, okay? You should have spotted that as soon as you walked in the room, because now the letters work both ways, you can read it perfectly when you walk in, memorise it, and cheat. You may come away with glasses that don't work, but you'll at least have a great sense of victory.

I haven't blogged in a week or so, so here's the essential need-to-know stuff:

- I have lately spent most of my time in barns.
- I have new glasses. It's a radical departure for me.
- I bought a puppet last week.
- I went to an excellent reunion of people from my student theatre days. I organised it, and I'm happy to say that 25 attended, all were good eggs, and no one had aged badly.
- Today I saw a video of my bladder.

But mainly lately I've found myself immersed - accidentally - in Agatha Christie. I found myself last week booking tickets for And Then There Were None (the play coming to Guildford next week), while watching the Agatha Christie episode of Dr Who, while playing the And Then There Were None PC game from several years back. Is Dame Aggie undergoing a mini-revival, and I'm being caught up in it? Or is it coincidence? I'm not entirely sure. Worth investigating perhaps... No, it isn't.

I have always been a fan. And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians, aka Ten Little other things) is my Desert Island Book, and over my teenage years I collected almost all of her 80 books. I loved 'em. Give me a Poirot over a Miss Marple any day, but any would do really. I was a particular fan of, apart from the aforementioned ATTWN, The Big Four, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder On The Orient Express (of course), The ABC Murders, Cat Among The Pigeons... I could go on. I think that the only one I sussed out early on was Dead Man's Folly. So if you fancy trying outsmart her, start with that one.

The PC game I'm currently playing, based on And Then There Were None but with a different ending (otherwise it would be easy), is proving great fun - the first computer game I've played in years that wasn't Minesweeper, Freecell, or a simple one on Facebook. It's one of those point-and-click adventure games, where you can pick up objects, walk around, and talk to badly-rendered versions of people. It's hardly Grand Theft Auto, but one step at a time.

And the Dr Who episode. See it? If you did, did you spot the continuous references to Agatha Christie novels? Probably not, but there were loads. Here are the ones I spotted:

Why Didn't They Ask Evans
N or M
Nemesis
The Moving Finger
Appointment With Death
The Body In The Library
Cards On The Table
Sparkling Cyanide
They Do It With Mirrors
Crooked House
And Then There Were None
Death Comes As The End
Endless Night

...and I'm sure there were more too. Any other closet Agatha fans out there? Join me, before we all get killed off.

I had my Speed Awareness Course yesterday, to ensure that I don't get yet another 3 points on my licence. A bright summer's day, stuck inside on a weekend, being punished along with other strangers... I was in The Breakfast Club. One of them even looked like Judd Nelson (only 50 - so, actually how he might look now, ish).

It was surprisingly unpatronising. And interesting, at times. Although there was a lot of the usual "If you drive at 35mph, you're 5mph more likely to kill someone that at 30miph", but also I learned:

- that if you see no reminders for ages of what speed limit you're in, it's a 30, or a dual carriageway, or a motorway. So if you're wondering if it's a 30 or a 40, it's a 30. This is because legally they have to place reminders every km or so if it's a 40 or a 50, but if it's a 30, they only have to tell you once. So there.
- that minibuses, caravans, lorries etc aren't allowed to go at 60mph in a national speed limit like the rest of us; they have to go at 50mph. And speed cameras can tell the difference in size of vehicle.
- that lorries can physically only get up to 56mph on a flat road. Unless, of course, they've been fiddled with, which ain't legal.

Anyway, I passed (although you pass just by turning up), so no point for me. Apart from the 6 on my licence already. Oh, and the woman who ran the speed awareness course yesterday turned out to be the woman who taught be to drive 12 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised by this; she wasn't. I guess it's not good for her as an instructor to see one of her pupils show up as, well, practically a criminal...

...aka Ageing, part 5 (at least - even my 'ageing' blogs are getting old - blimey). The radio silence in blogland is cos I proposed on the weekend, and she said yes, so I am now an engaged man...

So, the inevitable questions of how, where, why, etc. Well the short answer is Dartmoor, on top of a waterfall. The only slightly less short answer is that Zoe took me away for a mystery surprise weekend (only slightly given away when she said two days before we went, "Don't worry if you don't get time to buy wellies before we go - you can get some in Devon." Ah. But still, the rest was a surprise, and indeed it's Britain's best kept secret. The little farmland area between Dartmouth and Salcome - I recommend it to everyone. We stayed in one of a lovely row of cottages on a converted farm, which now houses a swimming-pool, sauna, jacuzzi, tennis court, full-size snooker table, games room with x-box, table-tennis, table-football, 200 DVDs, and each cottage with a full kitchen, log-fire, TV, Sky, DVD player, free wifi, yet all also beamed and old-fashioned and homely and beautiful. Plus it's wonderful scenery, the beach is 10min walk away, you can cycle a-plenty (and we did), and there are really really excellent restaurants and pubs in neighbouring villages. What more could you ask for from a holiday destination?

Oh yes, nice weather. Well we had that too, so ha. On Saturday we decided to make the most of the nice weather and visit Castle Drogo on Dartmoor, just cos it sounds so sinister and we wanted to see if there be dragons. We also thought we'd take in Canonteign Falls - England's tallest waterfall, so we reached there, paid our £5.80 each to climb the falls, and atop it, I proposed. For me of course though, I can't resist doing something a little different, so I did it via a magic trick. I forced two cards on her (that's magician talk - there was no physical forcing of anything, I'm delighted to say, as that is less than romantic), so she thought she'd picked two random cards: the 2 of Hearts and the Ace of Diamonds. I got her to shut her eyes and convert those cards into a number and a suit, ie. 2 hearts and 1 diamond. She opened her eyes, and there was the diamond, there were 2 hearts (living in just one mind), me on one knee and all around were tourists chucking up at what they'd just seen. Well tough, it's our moment.

Anyway, she said yes, so woohoo. We clambered down the waterfall (I'll put some piccies up on facebook of the view from there), and sadly forewent Castle Drogo, in favour of finding a pub for a stiff drink. We found this pub in the middle of Dartmoor, in Widecombe-on-the-Moor. Middle of nowhere, and in that pub, who should we see, but comedian Gareth Richards. "On my way to a gig in Plymouth", he said. I think he's stalking me. Last time I saw him he was sat behind me in Odeon Guildford, and he doesn't even live in Guildford. I'm getting suspicious. If he turns up at the wedding and yells out that he loves me when the vicar asks if anyone knows any reason, etc etc, then I won't be surprised.

Oh yeah. The wedding. I'd fotgotten that's what happens after proposals. Well by dinner on Saturday evening, at a lovely Thai restaurant in Dartmouth, we'd decided on everything from who's doing the readings to what sort of car takes her to church. But that's all to be rethought, altered and debated further over the next year (for twill be about a year till any knot-tying), cos otherwise what else are we going to talk about?

Facebook have already started their 'targetted advertising' (that's why you've been getting adverts about bands you like recently), and as soon as I changed from 'In A Relationship' to 'Engaged', I'm being bombarded with ads for wedding photographers or strippers for stag dos (alright, just the former). And speaking of Facebook, did anyone notice that my status all last week was 'Paul is vacant'. Twas meant to be clever, ie. that I could change it to 'Paul is engaged'. Vacant? Engaged? Geddit? Yeah, no one else did - it turns out no one checks my status. Pah. I feel unloved. Except the opposite.