Mustn't Grumble

I’ve been away from the blog for a couple of  weeks – not from any sense of haughty disdain, but because various mishaps and ailments and what-have-yous have beset me.  First and foremost, was the internet playing up.  It’s amazing, isn’t it?  It’s not so long ago that t’internet, as Peter Kay would say, was a bit of a luxury, an addition, just one of those added bits of technology that made life more interesting - or awkward – for those who hadn’t grown up with it.  Then it became, without a great deal of fuss being made, utterly central to our lives.

What is irritating, of course, is when it is central to work and keeping in touch, to meet those (it’s a bit like meeting someone who won’t have a TV or doesn’t need to drive) who doesn’t use t’internet; for some obscure reason they pride themselves on not using it, as if we’re all bespectacled geeks, enslaved to a screen, whereas they get out and about and do – what?  Run marathons?  Read Tolstoy?  Build scale models of HMS Victory out of matchsticks?  Call me cynical, but I don’t think so...

Then there’s my tooth.  Ouch.  What is it with teeth?  Take your average brachiosaurus, sabre-tooth tiger or luckless cave-man and involve them in a tsunami, volcanic eruption, a meteor strike bigger than Deep Impact or just general, hideous death in a tar pit and their teeth will come up white and shiny and looking like something from a Colgate advert.  Left to their own devices, teeth clearly have the staying power of Jon Bon Jovi on his fifth encore and the metabolic rate of granite.  So why, when housed in a warm, comfortable gum and not called upon to do anything out of the ordinary, such as open metal bottle tops or chew leather – when, in fact. Mr Tooth gets brushed twice a day and even flossed occasionally, does AN Tooth suddenly decide enough’s enough and hand its cards in?

 Take my back tooth, for instance.  Although you can’t take my back tooth because the dentist has done that. There it was, minding its own business, not drawing attention to itself, not making a fuss or interfering with its neighbours, just standing quietly in the rear  – the Tooth version of a bass guitar player in a Seventies rock band, as you might say – when suddenly, without warning, it was chucking its weight about and sending All Dive signals to my central nervous system. 

Just attention seeking, you may think.  No, it’s an abscess, and it didn’t make the heart grow fonder.  How sharper than (the pain from) a serpent’s tooth is the tooth that’s got a ruddy abscess under it, as Shakespeare or someone probably said at some time or other.

There’s just a hole there now.  Memories.  That’s all.  And a pit, hole, void or gap that feels as if someone’s been doing deep-cast mining. 

Still, worse things happen at sea, mustn’t grumble, there’s often a crumpled leaf in a bed of roses, etc., etc., etc.  Which is why I’m not even going to mention how I managed to break my metatarsal bone and end up on crutches.  It was just one of those days, really.