Toothache

We have got more fog, and I have got toothache.

I think this is caused by an occasionally recurring abscess, which flares up and makes me very sorry for myself every couple of years. I have self prescribed some antibiotics which a kindly doctor gave us to use for emergencies once, during one of our mildly bohemian adventures. We didn’t have occasion to use them at the time but I think this unhappy ailment definitely qualifies. I have also self-prescribed some painkillers but apparently the antibiotic makes you sick if you drink whilst you are taking it, so I think I had better not do that and am sticking to the tablets.

It all seems to be working so far in that I am not dead and my tooth does not hurt nearly as badly as it did this afternoon, who needs dentists when we have got Google and some DIY medication? Anyway my last trip to the dentist cost six hundred quid and took me a year to pay for it. You will not be surprised to discover that I haven’t got six hundred quid, and if I had I wouldn’t be giving it to the dentist, because there are lots of lovely things in the world and if things get really bad Mark can pull the tooth out with the pliers.

One of the other taxi drivers did that once, actually. Dentists are at a bit of a premium here and he couldn’t bear the pain any more and pulled  his own tooth out with the assistance of some metalworking pliers and half a bottle of Jim Beam. We all crowded round to look at the ghastly hole in his mouth, he was jolly brave. He is actually dead now, but that is not because of the tooth.

In consequence of this I am having rather a pleasant evening. I have suffered agonies with the tooth and the combination of not being in pain whilst also being slightly light headed from the drugs is making me feel really quite mellow and contented.

We took Oliver back to school this evening. He was exhausted when we got back from France, and has barely emerged from his bedroom during the intervening time, certainly has not concerned himself with irksome chores like getting dressed.

He was chirpy enough this afternoon, though, and ate an enormous plateful of pancakes and played his flute for us. He might be some way off earning a living as a busker yet, as he has only mastered two notes, which are the first two notes of Three Blind Mice, so when he plays them we all sing along. He keeps having a go at the third but has not mastered it yet despite enthusiastic encouragement from the rest of us.

We explained to him that he needed to keep trying as his flute lessons cost £174 per term, which meant that his current two notes had cost us £87 each. However, if he could add a third this would bring the cost down to £58, which was much more reasonable. He listened earnestly and promised that he would have mastered the third by Christmas, we have our fingers crossed.

Mark cleaned his shoes, and I ironed things and spread wet washing all over the house. The laundry project is still ongoing, I have not yet managed to finish all the washing we brought back from our holidays, and still have several loads to go. I am quite enjoying myself because of the rotary iron and the satisfaction of slowly creating piles of smoothly crisp linen, although I have lost Mark’s collar stiffeners from his favourite twill shirt somehow, he keeps going on about it. I offered to get him some more but he said that I had already put the wrong ones in it last time, and they weren’t the right length.

I think that this is a ridiculous fuss, although I am slightly guiltily anxious in case they have got jammed somewhere in the mysterious internal passages of the washing machine and are lurking there with intent to cause a horrible grinding noise and a burning smell during some future wash load. All the same, I think it is quite fair to consider that he has got no business to ridicule me about having favourite clothes pegs, we all have our little ways.

We went together to take Oliver back to school, and learned his spellings on the way, and played the game where you go round and round telling one word of a story each, which made us all laugh, and then before we knew it we were there and it was time to say goodbye, and now we are just two again.

I have got to add all their sheets and towels to the laundry pile now.

It will be surprising if I have finished it all before Christmas.