I hate Dentists

Oh dear! Dentists are a necessary evil, but I do hate them. They stick their fat fingers into your mouth, pressing your lips against the sharp bits of your teeth and complain when you flinch. The last time I had a root canal filling, the dentiste, for it was a she, tried to drill through my tooth straight away. After four injections she gave up and sent me home with a week's worth of antibiotics. The next week she accomplished the deed in one go.

Today I was on my second visit for another root canal job. Last week he decided to conduct emergency dentistry on the tooth. Four injections was just enough for some of the pain to go, but not all. He sucked pus out of an abscess by the bucketful and gave me a week's worth of antibiotics. Today I anticipated finishing the job off. But no. There was yet more pus to be extracted by picking at the interior of my tooth and washing the abscess out with saline. He loves talking about how much pus is coming out, and showing it to me on a long pin he uses. He packed the hollow shell with some medicine and sent me away for another week. Would it have been quicker and cheaper for him to have taken the damned thing out last week? Probably. But dentists these days are into tooth conservation.

After this pain-crazed experience I drove home, only to realise half way that my driving was rather wonky. The effect of the anaesthetic, I suppose. Nevertheless, the woods looked utterly magnificent, filled with lush undergrowth. The leaves are just beginning to turn to autumnal yellows and reds. Next May it will be replaced by carpets of real English bluebells. Few of the trees are very old because the estate which manages the woods coppices them regularly. Some of the wood is retained for internal use for chestnut paling fences but the rest is sold off.

This evening while herself was away at orchestra, I read John Grisham's The Summons. I got half way through and knew what was going to happen by the end. And it did. So I gave up reading it. I hate books that are so predictable. You want a twist at the end to make you have to read the rest to find out where you made your mistake. Like a short story by Edward Thomas, the War Poet, that describes a wonderful summer's day in the countryside. You follow the path of a toddler through a field to a stream where, in the last sentence, she drowns. Now that is masterly, even if it is a bit overloaded with adjectives. The collection is called The Ship of Swallows.