“The journey to Wales has been really good for me”

I was 14 when I decided I wanted to do optometry.

I’m very dyslexic, and I was in the B-stream at high school. For me to do optometry, I had to do the science subjects, were only available to those in the A-stream. I ended up repeating a year at school so I could do the science subjects to be able to study optometry. I got all the results I needed, but the university I had applied to closed its doors the year that my results came out.

I had to apply to another university and take a gap year.

During that gap year, I worked with an architect, so I nearly switched over to architecture instead of doing optometry. But then I thought: ‘well, optometry is my first choice. Let me just do it.’ 

I qualified as an optometrist in 1993 in South Africa, and moved back to Zimbabwe. 

I was offered a practice for sale, straight out of university. The owner took me on as a partner within three months, and then sold it to me after six months. That was my first practice, and I went on to open multiple practices in partnership with another optometrist. We grew to become the largest group in Zimbabwe, with 12 small practices. 

Then I broke my back paragliding, and had a very difficult recovery.

The end result was that I left optometry, because I was struggling too much. I needed to concentrate on my healing. We sold the practices off as a group. Zimbabwe was going through quite a hard time, and we agreed to sell the practices to a medical aid society. 

I also owned a pub at the time, which I had opened for my sister, in the country.  

I took over the running of the pub instead of practising optometry, which allowed me to heal like I needed to. Physiotherapists, doctors and orthopaedic surgeons said that I’d be in a wheelchair by the age of 40, because there was a lot of stenosis in the spine.

But a patient of mine recommended that I see a retired osteopath whom she knew. He put me on a whole journey of yoga, gym and diet, and he basically got me right. Through that, I ended up doing Reiki, because my yoga instructor was a Reiki Master. It was an incredible journey.  

There had been an architect above my optometry practice in Bulawayo, and he had seen what I had done with the shop designs.  

Whilst I was running the pub, he asked if I would do some design work for him. That’s how I got back into architectural design. Then I was approached by the head of the architectural department of University of Zimbabwe, who asked me to give some lectures on design for his students. 

Then, in 2017, I had a retinal tear in one eye, which ended up becoming a retinal detachment.

That brought me back to optometry. I thought, ‘how do I jump start back into optometry after a gap of 10 years?’ I thought I should maybe do a Master’s, which I had always wanted to do.

My late father's family is from Wales. I Googled Cardiff University, and it had a very good rating.

I applied to do a full-time Master’s, and I got accepted, which surprised me. I did my Masters’ in 2018 and got a distinction, which was even more surprising – I had nearly dropped out after three months, because I thought I could never get through it. I was 50 when I did my Master’s, and it was hard to go back into education.  

Everything was pointing the direction of staying, because I loved what was happening with optometry in Wales.

It is what everybody wants to happen as an optometrist, and Wales just seems to be the forefront of it.

I mentioned to Barbara Ryan [deputy head of Cardiff University’s School of Optometry and Vision Sciences], who I had worked with through my Master’s, that I was considering staying in Wales. She put me in touch with [optometrist and practice owner] Helen Tilley, and I spent a day in her practice, Monnow Eyecare, in Monmouth.

That night, when I got back into Cardiff, I got a phone call from Andy Britton [owner of Specsavers Haverfordwest], saying, ‘do you want to come to Pembrokeshire?’ 

I said, ‘where’s Pembrokeshire?’ I went and visited for the weekend. I wasn’t looking for a partnership, but Andy talked me into it. I had been looking into early retirement. I phoned my wife and said to her, ‘how do you feel about me joining Andy?’ She went very quiet, and said, ‘I thought we were retiring early?’ Then she said that she knew it would happen. She knows me very well.

I ended up joining Andy, and now I’m a partner of the business. I believe it is one the best practices in the UK.

It has been a very serendipitous journey, without a doubt. Everything has come together with this practice. I always said if I ever got back into optometry, I’d have an all-glass consulting room in a garden, because I hated that dark room. Now, I can sit in my chair, and I can look out the window, and we’ve got this beautiful river, we’ve got the castle; we’ve got the ducks and swans.

A new concept in practice design

Huw Evans Agency

Huw Evans Agency

Huw Evans Agency

Because of my back injury, we focused a lot on ergonomic design.

This practice is the first Specsavers that has got stand-up desks. We’ve also got specialised chairs, designed for the optometrists to move a little bit more.

If you really think about it, we deal with lights. That’s our profession. It’s light. Yet, our consulting rooms can be quite dingy.  

With patients, you’re dealing with somebody’s primary sense. They come in quite stressed, sometimes. For them to sit in that stillness, overlooking that river, is relaxing. 

We are an advanced training practice, and we have a very specialised group of optometrists working here.

The direction of the practice is Andy’s vision. Because of my entrepreneurship, I’m good at running businesses, so I think we complement each other very well.

It’s unusual for Specsavers to have an optometrist as a retail partner, but I think that there’s an advantage to that, because I know both sides of the fence. I know the business side very, very well, and I know the optometry side very well. It has all come together.