The dentist's chair.

Today, I found myself back in the dentist's chair undergoing emergency treatment to rectify a filling that had not settled down and, indeed, had become unbearable over the last few days, hence the emergency appointment.

I consider myself to have been relatively trouble free where teeth are concerned, I have the odd filling, but not much more, so this has been something of a new (and unwelcome) experience. Part of the problem is that, until you have had toothache, you have nothing to gauge it against to know how severe it is. Anyway, it turned out that I needed root canal work which, after pumping the area full of anaesthetic, he set about with gusto.

It always amuses and horrifies me how, at its core, dentistry remains wholly basic and fundamentally brutal. Still, minus the nerve it no longer aches and that is bliss! Furthermore, when I got back to work my students were deeply amused at my inability to pronounce certain letters while my mouth was still palsied from the anaesthetic!