Danger in paradise

Imagine this. I'm sitting in the garden, coffee in hand, eyes drowsy, face raised to the sun, absorbed in the unaccustomed warmth and the soothing chirps of the sparrows, when suddenly a sound impinges on my consciousness. Buzzzzz. I look down to see a large wasp about to settle on my arm.

Now, remember the second phrase of the second sentence of the last paragraph? You know the expression, 'knee-jerk reaction'? Well, I had an arm-jerk reaction. Coffee arced up in a fountain and came down on my hair, my glasses, my face, my t-shirt, my trousers, the table and chair... I gave myself everything short of a coffee enema and I'd probably have had that, too, if I hadn't been wearing trousers. My clothes are in the washing machine, I've swabbed the table and chair and the sun has gone back behind the clouds. I'm very glad Mr G was out at the time or I would never hear the end of it!

Think I'll just go back to bed

Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up feeling even more tired than you did before you went to sleep? Add aching limbs, a stuffy nose, earache and a tickly cough to the mix and I think it amounts to some kind of virus. Probably caught from the man I sat next to on the tube on the way back from the dentist's, who was coughing and sneezing and spraying his germs liberally all over the carriage. I suppose, when you have a traumatic time like I did at the dentist's, your immune system gets a momentary knock, giving those germs a perfect window of opportunity. Good job I have nothing planned this weekend, apart from finishing off an editing job.

Talking of which, although the grammar and punctuation are dodgy, the book I'm working on would deserve the title of the first ever Mills and Boon for the gay market. The main character is a 29-year-old man who has been reluctant to come out, and is even more reluctant to admit that, despite all his experimental fumbles and tentative relationships, the one person he is truly in love with is his flatmate, with whom he can't possible start anything up for fear of destroying the equilibrium. I'm three-quarters of the way through the book, the flatmate has done a disappearing act and my heart is in my mouth, hoping for the happy ending but fearing it will never come! And that's the stuff all the best M and B's are made of.

Blushing tomato

I've been giving my tomatoes a daily talking-to, telling them to hurry up and get red (but not telling them that this is so I can eat them as that would be scary enough to make stay green forever!). Today, I noticed that the first one to emerge on the plants a few weeks ago is now turning a delicate shade of pink. I'm so proud!

Wonder how my friend Jacula's tomato plants are doing? Not that we're in a competition or anything. Well, maybe...

Hoppers!

On a lighter note, as I was on the bus on my way to my friend's son's 21st birthday party on Saturday (where I got blotto on Pimms and champagne cocktails and spent all yesterday being very sick indeed), I felt a tickle on my wrist and looking down, saw there was a flea on it. I grabbed it and tried to squash the life out of it, then texted Mr G, who replied, 'Are you on a hopper bus?' Honestly! (For non-British readers, hopper buses are single deckers that service local routes.) Well, it certainly was hopping, that's for sure!

Sleepless in Hillingdon

I went to bed 2 hours ago but I'm up again now, because every time I close my eyes, I relive today's torture session in the dentist's chair and within moments I'm wide awake and worrying myself sick about what happens if the tooth (or any other of the faithless fangs) flares up and I have to go back there.

The crown feels all wrong. It sticks up and I can't close my teeth properly and my jaw feels misaligned. There's a rough patch at the back which my tongue catches on and I just know those painful ulcers on my tongue will start up again. Despite my decision to give my liver a rest, I am sipping a very small brandy through a straw and hoping it will help dull both the nagging pain in my tooth and my torturous thoughts.

I have started Googling painless dentists... but when you look at their prices, you realise that only celebs can afford them. My dad, who suffered greatly from toothache when he was young, had all his teeth taken out when he was 25. I'm starting to think 'sensible man'!

Lockjaw!

The dentist told me to avoid chewing on that side for a week and not to get any hot or cold liquids on the tooth. Drinking isn't a problem as I have let my tea cool down and am drinking it through a straw, as I would a G&T if I wasn't giving my liver a rest following Saturday night's overindulgence. It's food that's causing me grief because, following the injections and the tense state I was in, I can now only open my mouth about half an inch. I tried to eat a chip and it wouldn't go in so I had to shave bits off and poke them between my teeth. At this rate, I'll soon be under 9 st, which would be absolutely brilliant but tooth trauma is not the way to go, diet-wise, believe me.

Arrrgh, sob!

Today, the dentist narrowly avoided getting kicked in the cavity. Following decades of brutal treatment at the hands of old-style fangmen with old-style drills, in 1978 I joined the practice I am with now (having left briefly last year only to have the nerve jabbed and my tooth root pierced by a different dentist, so I went back).

For about 20 years I had a wonderful gentle, musical, philosophical Pole who never once caused me any pain. He retired and I was passed on to the head of the practice, a bluff, red-haired Scot who was a genius with the needle and drill and again, didn't ever hurt me. Tragically, he died aged only about 59.

Now I am with someone else and every time I go, I get hurt. Today was terrible. Three injections numbed my eye and my cheek, but not the tooth, so drilling out the old filling and cementing in the crown hurt so much that twice I cried out and once, my foot shot out and I nearly hit the ceiling. I was quivering in pain, tears in my eyes. And he had the cheek to tell me that there was nothing in my tooth that could have caused such pain. I'm sure he must have been close to the nerve.

Anyway, he wants to operate on the tooth he did the (very painful) root canal work on, and chop off the root that is still giving trouble. No way am I going to let him. Just imagine if the injection didn't work for that! Or if he decided to yank it out! I am now so phobic about him that I don't ever want to go back. But, as we all know, finding a new dentist is extremely difficult. And expensive. At present, my Denplan insurance costs £32 per month and my crown has just cost £125 on top of that. Going to a private dentist could cost hundreds every time - yet my Denplan costs nearly £400 a year. Don't know what to do. Pity about my current dentist. He's a very nice person, but hasn't got the magic touch!