Self-portrait, Vienna, 1655. (Detail). Rembrandt van Rijn.

I saw a man crouched by the side of the road close to the railway station last week. I thought he’d dropped something. Then I saw he was holding a piece of chalk and was in fact writing on the pavement. Must just have poor eyesight, I decided. Anyway, before I could see what it was he was writing, he peered up. ‘I’ve not finished yet,’ he said.

The artist was due an eye operation around the same time. I was struck by how vulnerable it made me feel. Interconnectedness, I guess. One of the characteristics of the artist’s work—as I’ve indulged the reader before in these pages—is detail, and the thought of it being tampered with by a surgeon was unsettling us both.

I’ve studied the artist’s attention to detail for years. It has compelled me to look at things more closely than I suspect I would have done otherwise. To consider her eyesight in jeopardy was the mother of all distractions—not that the general optics of the world are any better. In fact, they are far worse.

Some people are physically blinded by malice. There have been so many instances of children losing their sight, if not their lives, to shrapnel lately, or explosive remnants left by armies that detonate. Talk about perspective.

Determined to attend the operation........

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