Ouch ...

It's been one of those days when you have things happen that will in the end turn out - or so we hope - to do you good but which don't exactly fill you with joy at the time. Let's start with a Visit to the Dentist. Followers of this journal will perhaps recall that I've had dental traumas requiring visits during lockdown, but this was the treatment after my first normal check-up in over two years. I went in at 9.40am, expecting to be out by the back of ten, but it was an hour later when I staggered out after a filling repair and the most searching clean I've ever had. (Have you had your pockets probed an assessed? Deep joy ... especially after such a long time not seeing the hygienist)

The jag for the filling wore off just in time for me to have a quick coffee before meeting another musician at church to go over a communion anthem for Sunday, and it was home to eat lunch in a very cautious fashion, having discovered that my jaw was exceedingly tender. Later in the afternoon we walked up to the hospital for our Covid booster vaccination (our 4th jag - Pfizer, same as the last one). It turned out to be quite a sociable event, largely because of the recuperation room in a former ward where we met people we knew and had a phone call from #1 son. We then walked home again, though that felt like hard work.

I'm blipping a brief but lovely interlude before my dental appointment, when I called in on my friend Paddy because I was too early and had time to kill. At that time in the morning, I'd not have let me in, but she seemed unmoved and let me see her wonderful work in progress - a detailed watercolour of a bit of fabulously licheny tree which sits proudly in the centre of her living room. My thanks to her for letting me see it - and for taking my mind off the teeth!

Extra of Dunoon Community Hospital, where my #2 son was born and where I have been an inpatient in the days when it had several wards and more in-patients than it seems to have now.