Toothsome

Although ever fewer.

We’d run out of bread (how?), so Z suggested muesli instead of toast.  I haven’t eaten muesli for about twenty years, so I was clearly happy to try a drastic swerve away from habit.  It was delicious.

About a third of the way through, I thought ‘that isn’t a nut’.

It was a tooth – or to be more exact, a metal cap that had, many years ago, been glued onto what had remained of a tooth after the dentist had filed it down to a thin but firmly rooted spike.

Unfortunately, whereas usually if a cap comes off the peg is still in place and so the cap can just be simply glued back on again, in this case the peg had snapped off too.  I knew instantly that nothing could be done, so of course I phoned the dentist to book an urgent appointment to confirm that.  They offered me 11.15.  Z kindly drove me to Norwich, on the grounds that a) if something unlikely could in fact be done, it might involve anaesthesia or sedation or anything that might render me incapable of driving and so entailing inordinate complexity and expense, and b) parking’s really difficult around there.

Andre, our brilliant expensive dentist, confirmed my self-diagnosis – nothing can be done – but filed off a little rough bit anyway.  No charge!  But it was a wake-up call, or a heads-up, or a JFDI.  I’ve been procrastinating for nearly two years now, mainly with the excuse that, hey, I won’t be able to chew on that side, will I? – but now I can’t anyway.  So starting next month, I’ll be getting two whole decks of new teeth, or more efficient and durable equivalents.  I’m not sure whether I want to distress you with the details of this ‘procedure’ (as medical people tend to euphemise major invasive surgery), but I don’t see why I should be the only one to suffer, so here goes.

Firstly, the remnants of the old teeth are pulled out, and holes are drilled into the jawbones.  Threaded implants are then inserted into these holes, and the whole thing is left for three months to settle down.  If that all goes well (I haven’t conducted a risk assessment, yet), pegs are screwed into the implants, synthetic teeth are glued onto these pegs, and after another settle-down period chomping can recommence.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, given the cost of a decent small family car, I hope the answer is ‘nothing’.  But I’m going to check out any relevant insurance cover.

Supercaravan

Z showed me an advert, disguised as a news story, about an American, um, thing that claims, for financial or fiscal reasons, to be a caravan but is in fact an incredibly badly designed almost uninhabitable shack.  Sleeps six.  She’ll provide a link to the details if you persuade her to.

My caravan is four feet wider than the American thing.  It also comes with the benefit of Joseph.

I was awoken at 1.33 am precisely by a roaring noise.  Usually that signifies stormy weather, but I knew that wasn’t the case.  So I forced the pace and got out of bed.  The noise seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when I went in there it seemed not to be.  ‘Ah ha,’ I thought.

Of course, it was outside plumbing, yet again.  I turned off the mains supply tap and went back to bed, thinking dark thoughts that can’t and won’t be retailed here.  ‘Enough’ was the softest.

Next morning, I managed to bump into Joseph.  Once he’d finished his complicated conversation with Brian, he came over in his Lan Rover and fixed the problem in minutes, once he’d found the necessary parts.  I can’t explain the process in detail, because that would require me to imagine lying flat on my back in a brambly ditch underneath a caravan, doing fiddly things with plumbing.  All I can say is: he’s a hero, and worth every penny of the £(fillinyourownnumber) rent I pay him.

In other news, we went to Carew (pronounced, I still firmly believe having been so taught by my mother in 1952, Carey) Castle, which is about as good as ruined castles can get.  And then to the Creselly Arms, a very basic pub on the beautiful Cresswell estuary that used to sell just local beer but has recently moved upmarket by offering cheese and pickle rolls too.