Fun, games and dentistry!

I have been visiting the same dentist since I was about eight and as I am now 26 that is a pretty lengthy time to be doing anything. My dentist, the dental nurse and I have been lamenting the state of my teeth for a similar amount of time. Point proved when I was asking if my peg tooth that we’re thinking of crowning had a big root and he pulled out an X-ray and said ‘well, you can see… oh, it’s not there yet. How old is this?’ There were mostly milk teeth. How old indeed?! Both he and the nurse have hardly changed at all in the time I have been visiting and I have blossomed into the fullness of womanhood. *snorts* The room that the dentist does his dentistry in had also remained completely unchanged, until my last visit.

Until this point my dentist was the very proud owner of one of those terrible ‘headrush’ dentist chairs. Know the ones I mean? They have a big lever that the dentist stands on and then he can lift, swivel or tip the entire chair. My dentist, for the past eighteen years, had operated the chair thusly:

First of all, you get on to the chair. It’s always slightly higher than is comfortable and you always had to physically climb on in the same style as one might mount a mechanical bull. Once you’ve settled yourself the dentist will stamp on the lever without warning and yank the head end of the chair pretty much into his crotch. Your feet are now the highest point and the blood starts to rush towards your head. Not where you want it when there’s drilling going on in your mouth. For some bizarre reason, my dentist also tends to keep his finger in your mouth when he’s talking to you. It’s like some kind of comfort thing. For him, I guess. Doesn’t help me to relax any. But I digress… once he’s spent a good half an hour poking around in your mouth and keeping his finger warm and you’ve spent the same time staring up his nostrils, wondering if the face mask is for your benefit or his then it’s time to rinse and spit. The dentist does try to warn you, bless him, by saying ‘OK Dear?’ but he never fails to catch me unaware. He stamps on the lever again and hurls you back into the upright position so quickly that I swear you can feel the G forces. Your blood hurtles back into your feet and you have a job maintaining your balance as you stagger toward the door. I think it’s all a cunning ploy to disorientate you so you don’t complain about the extortionate prices of having someone rest their finger in your mouth for twenty minutes. …At least I hope it’s his finger…

Now the dentist has moved into the room that used to house the scary x-ray machines and has a new and exciting electrical chair. I point this out immediately after I get into the room. I also mock him. I believe my exact words were, ‘Nice chair. Do you know how to use it?’ He laughs. He has known me a long time. He knows what to expect. Anyway, I sit on, rather than ‘mount’ the new chair, which makes a big difference to start with. Then all by the magic of pressing a button, he can move you from a sitting, into a reclining position. I’m impressed. Then the dentist presses the button to lower me (presumably to crotch level…) but something goes very wrong and I end up at about ankle height. He spends some time swearing and violently stamping on a button next to my left ear, but I remain stubbornly lying pretty much on the floor. Why in the Hell does the chair even go this low? From my position at ground level, I enquire if he wouldn’t like me to get up. ‘No, Dear’ he responds through clenched teeth.

Apparently we have to wait for the dental nurse to reappear. When she does and catches sight of me waving cheerfully from the floor, both she and I are barely able to restrain our laughter. She raises me back to crotch level, he pops his finger into my mouth and we’re away, while they have their usual argument. It’s a new view, but oddly the same. I’m certainly sure his nostril hair is greyer than usual at any rate….

Feel that?.... Know what that is?... Well...

I have just been browsing the internet for symptoms of a heart attack. It's always good to be prepared. This was without a doubt my favourite list of symptoms... See if you can guess why.

The American Heart Association and other medical experts say the body likely will send one or more of these warning signals of a heart attack:

Uncomfortable pressure, fullness, squeezing or pain in the center of the chest lasting more than a few minutes.
Pain spreading to the shoulders, neck or arms. The pain may be mild to intense. It may feel like pressure, tightness, burning, or heavy weight. It may be located in the chest, upper abdomen, neck, jaw, or inside the arms or shoulders.
Chest discomfort with lightheadedness, fainting, sweating, nausea or shortness of breath.
Anxiety, nervousness and/or cold, sweaty skin.
Paleness or pallor.
Increased or irregular heart rate.
Feeling of impending doom.

Well thankfully I am only suffering with one of these. I've had it for quite a few years. Jesus. A symptom of a heart attack is a feeling of impending doom? Just Mother Nature's little joke.

In the light of North Korea and the US having their little nuclear tiff I should imagine we're all suffering from a little 'impending doom'.

Bring on the "LASER".

I've just noticed that my flies are undone. The last time I went to the toilet was around 2.00 this afternoon. It's now 8.00. During that time I have travelled quite a long way around London on the tube and train and met several people I haven't met before. All with my flies gaping open. Yay. This happens all the damn time.

I've had a rather depressing day and it has taken me about 4 hours to see any humour in it at all. Thankfully there must be something to laugh about or I wouldn't be writing about it now. For the story to make sense, you must understand that I appear to be becoming a werewolf. Over the past few years I have been growing steadily more hairy and now it has begun to drive me mad for my hair has become almost totally resistant to any kind of hair removal method. It was time to get out the laser.

I had looked this place up on the internet and it looked all Harley Street reputable and shit (plus a FREE consultation). After all one doesn't want rank amateurs pointing high powered lasers at your face and not knowing exactly what they were doing. I'd also looked up this list of things you should ask when you get there, being that I had no idea what all this concerned. There was a rather impressive list suggesting you should get everything in writing and take names and stuff. That's all good because I'm the type of person to hand over my card and shout 'BRING IT ON!!'

Armed with my list of a billion questions and my stylish coat, I set out about an hour before the appointment at three o’ clock to make my way to the station. I’m about 5 minutes down the road when I see a blur from above strike me on the front of my coat. Yes. A bird had SHAT on me. Luckily I’ve got a tissue to wipe most of it off and at this point I can still laugh at the huge irony of it. I make my way to the station in time to discover that the train is late. Uh… yay. Enough time to go and buy an A-Z to work out just where in the hell I’m supposed to be going. Yes, I have lived in London all my life, but I’ve never been to Harley Street before and I hope never to again. So the train turns into the tube and I realise that thanks to the dubious London Bridge service, I’m going to be late. And I have bird shit on my coat. By the time I reach Great Portland Street Tube Station it’s about ten past three. The only thing that will calm my nerves is a full speed sprint across a busy street. And then back again when I realise I have been sprinting in the wrong damn direction. By the time I arrive, a full 15 minutes late for my appointment, I’m red, sweating profusely and ready to cry. And, in case it escaped your notice, I have bird shit on my coat. There’s also a strong possibility my flies were undone.

First of all, in case you didn’t know, if you have a clinic in Harley Street, there’s a certain rep to protect. This seems to mean that you have to have Vivaldi piped into every room in the place, a waiting room full of chesterfield sofas and silk flowers scattered everywhere. Just so everyone feels just a tad out of place. Of course, when I get in there I have to fill in a questionnaire about what they tactfully refer to as ‘my condition’. The hell? What condition? I’m just a bit hairy… I find myself glancing around the room and, in between doing double takes at the hideous gilded lamp stands and bizarre naked statues hanging from the walls, wondering what everyone else is here for. The guy in the corner looked suspiciously like he suffered from erectile dysfunction. I didn’t even know they had ‘a look’ but it was something to do with the shifty eyes. I then have to perform a bizarre checklist about my hair and eye colour and whether I tan normally. I’m starting to think that perhaps I’ll just live with being hairy when a lady comes in and calls me. For a start, she indicates the coffee machine behind me and asks me if I want a drink. No. I’ve been sitting right next to it for 10 minutes. I’d have got one by now. She carries on talking, and just when she stops indicating the machine, I realise she was offering to shake my hand and I just ignored her. A rather inauspicious start, n’est pas?

We get into the tiniest lift known to man and she does the sort of chatting designed to ‘put the customer at ease’ which I can tell immediately and so makes me horribly nervous. We sit in her office and she talks to me about the laser business which is impossible to take in and confuses me immensely. Then I have to endure her trying to be pally and telling me about her own laser hair removal. She indicates her platinum white locks and tells me she’s actually a brunette. (NO!!! Surely you jest!) It’s all about how ‘us girls’ don’t talk to each other about our unwanted hair. Bollocks. I will happily bitch to strangers in the street about the trials and tribulations of being a trainee werewolf. In fact. Here I am posting it on the Internet. (Please hold all shouts of ‘Kill the beast!!’ until the end.)

A lovely girl comes in to assess me and is really nice about it all. Apparently I am an ideal candidate for the process. (Realllllly? I bet I am.) I try to get some of my questions in to her about test patches and price of those. The other lady chips in and indicates that all money questions are to be relayed to her directly. Uh. OK. I give what must be the falsest of all false trilling laughs, as does the lady. The nice nurse leaves me alone with the “blonde” and the hard sell begins. I’m OK with that. I know she wants my money, but I just need to ask her my four million questions and then I’m more than happy to give it to her. But of course, it’s me and that means that nothing will go easily.

It starts off well enough but then after I’ve asked her to clarify some things I was unsure on, I sense that she’s getting annoyed. I don’t think I was being unnecessarily irritating, and I don’t think I even got to asking her anything about who would be doing the lasering and how long they’d been using the laser for. I asked her if she had some documents I could take home and read which was mainly because I thought it might have some of the info I was missing and was now quite uncomfortable about asking. She asked me if I’d looked at the website. Yes. It was telling me how great laser hair removal was. Can you tell me if the same person does all your treatments and if so can they do a test patch? None of that is on your website!! It’s at about this point that she absolutely knocks me for six by leaning forward in a conspiratorial fashion and saying sincerely ‘Look, Stoat, you have to make the decision as to whether to have this or not, the hair won’t go away on its own…’ She manages to say the same thing twice in the next few minutes.

Well. I am speechless. Are you threatening me with hair? Is this an ultimatum – have the treatment or be forever shunned? (Obviously, she called me by my first name and not ‘stoat’. That would really have been rude! ) And I think all my questions died in my throat. I had a last attempt at trying to sort it out by asking if there was a chance the nice girl could fit me in for a test patch today. ‘Blonde’ had assured me that she could do all my treatments and I thought I could ask her some of the other questions once the scary one had left.

We go into another room to try and book a test patch for the day and they have another random woman available to do it. I don’t want her. No matter how nice she may be, the information all says to have the same person do the test patch as the treatments. Apparently the nice lady is leaving at the end of the week on maternity leave. (Was she even pregnant?) Hmm. Makes her doing my appointment a little difficult then… I leave feeling like a real pain in the arse. An ungrateful, hairy, bird shit-spattered pain in the arse. Thing is, if ‘Blonde’ had only answered all my questions, and set me at ease, she’s have had a more than willing customer. It bothers me that people more desperate than I are dragged in by this kind of selling technique. Truth be told I wanted nothing more than to lay down my money and just let it go, and never have to worry about being hairy ever again, but there was something in me that wasn’t happy about the process and that means I can’t do it. Stupid consumer ethics. So, if you’re a narrow-minded villager brandishing a flaming torch, and you’re looking for a werewolf to hunt down across the moors on moonlit nights, I’m your girl…. AWOOOOOO!

Guide me, Goose...

Just why the hell am I watching Top Gun? In the name of all that's holy. It's just the cheesiest of the cheesy and I have always hated Tom Cruise. And this is him at his best...

That's it. I'm going to bed.

Look, I PLANNED to be up and dressed by now...

Today my laptop and I are planning to spend some quality time together installing and then probably uninstalling new technology. This will end, as with all other technological activities when combined with my innate klutziness, with me stalking away from the laptop, fists clenched and mouth pursed up like a cat's bottom.

I won't be doing it yet because I have yet to recover from my lie in today. I woke up at 7.30 feeling wide awake and ready for action. However, as today is a Sunday I showed immense dedication to the cause and remained in bed for an hour without moving or opening an eye until my traitorous body clock regognised its heinous error and allowed me to fall asleep again. It's now 4.00 and I have not yet bothered to get dressed or move away from my bed except to get cups of tea and scrambled eggs. I am deserving of this extreme laziness for I am a teacher.

Let me just explain to all you people who go on about the money and the holidays and so on, exactly what being a teacher entails. Yes, it is a wonderful profession with all the benefits of moulding and shaping young minds, and at least three or four times an hour, if you're as silly as I am, you will laugh until tears run down your face. On the flip side is the fact that your brain has to be on the go all day. Those little moments when you suddenly think, 'ooh. Where was I?' and get on with what you were doing? Not happening. If you should happen to succumb to one of those, then you will suddenly find that in your brief 4 second absence, anarchy and terrorism have seized control. You have to keep about 50 things in your head at once, including any or all of the following:

1. Who needs the toilet? This also includes identifying those who actually are close to bursting and those who just find your work uninteresting and in which order they have asked to go in. God forbid you should let one go before the other. Mutiny. Right there.

2. Who doesn't understand the question? There might be a sequence of around eight questions on a range of topics from the purpose of the Sikh turban, how to draw a plan of the classroom including a relevant key and the features of writing a playscript without descending into 'AAHHHH', 'GNARRR', 'EEEEEEEEEEEEE'. That was my last lesson on Thursday, by the way.

3. Is everyone concentrating? Who is gazing blankly out of the window? Who is engraving their name in a pencil on a wooden desk? Who is about to punch someone else? Who appears to be attempting to gain access to their brain with a finger through the nasal cavity?

4. How much time have you got left in the lesson and what things that you have forgotten to do need to be crammed into the following...*checks clock*.... four minutes?!

The last four points probably cover about a minute's worth of classroom time. My brain is literally firing on all cylinders. Then at the end of your teaching time, it crashes into an unattractive gibbering heap inside your head and refuses to do anything sensible, like planning or marking and just wants to be taken to the staffroom and given coffee until it recovers somewhat.

Tell me again, I don't need six weeks holiday. I need at least four weeks of that for illnesses I didn't have time for during term time.

...and this month's impulse buy is...

Oh yes...