It's here at last this lunchtime, my next potentially terrifying visit to my dentist, Kesh, which would be intimidating enough on its own, but we've also got to drive 25 miles to Cheltenham for the dubious pleasure of my getting the treatment. I started the course of treatment while we were still living in Cheltenham, so it seemed to makes sense to continue it there - oh dear!
Kesh, my dentist
And so it transpires today - everything turns out all right. Kesh makes an impression of my teeth using some sort of mould, with the risk that a loose tooth could come out when he eases the mould off my teeth and out of my mouth. As it is, everything goes well, the tooth stays in, and I'm in and out of Kesh's little room in just a little over 10 minutes.
My next potentially much more terrifying appointment with Kesh isn't for another month, so I'm just going to forget about dentistry for a while, if you don't mind. Everyone deserves a break from dentistry once in a while, don't they haha! [That's enough laughing! - Ed]
a typical case of "dentophobia" - this one was spotted in Australia.
Note the wide eyes and the open mouth, and the raised hands
- all classic symptoms of "dentophobia"
Do you ever feel so intensely relieved that you feel almost faint for a while? I know I do, and that's how I feel today. Luckily it soon passes off, which is nice.
12:30 After leaving the dental surgery, Lois and I drive to our old road in Cheltenham, to have lunch with one of our former neighbours, Frances.
It's so weird to see our old house again, and quite surreal. We lived there for 36 years, and it seems odd that we can't now just walk up to the front door, and let ourselves in.
our old house in Cheltenham, with the lovely cherry tree
that was there when we moved in, in 1986
We see that the new owners have thrown out our perfectly good set of curtains that we left them for the downstairs front windows and installed some Venetian blinds instead.
Huh! Our 30-year-old curtains not good for you, were they!!!! Huh (again) !!!!
We also notice that the new owners have put a partly-humorous sign on the wall of their front garden, "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE". During our time in the house we always resisted putting up that kind of sign, because we have always thought that the tone of them was unnecessarily aggressive - it's actually quite rare for unauthorised people to park there on the forecourt, and these kinds of signs create a slightly bad and mean-spirited feel to the place, we think. Still, it was Gold Cup week in Cheltenham last week, so maybe that's why they put the sign up.
the front wall of our old house in Cheltenham now has a
"DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE" sign stuck on it - what madness !!!!
flashback to September 1986, our first year in the old house,
and Alison (11) and Sarah (9) in their new school uniforms,
ready to start their new school terms
We also happen to see our ex-next-door neighbour Nikki this morning, and have a nice chat with her. Finally we go and see Frances, who was our next-door-but-one neighbour. Lois and Frances take a stroll round the garden to inspect her plants, before we sit down for a delicious meal in her pleasantly cluttered dining-room.
Frances shows Lois round her back garden pointing
out significant news about her plants
she invites us to sit down for one of her delicious lunches
in her delightfully cluttered so-called dining-room, which is nice!
Frances's house is as untidy as ever - it reminds me of a storeroom or junk-room in a second-hand bookshop or antique shop - my goodness!!!But as Francis says, when you live alone, why bother to tidy up or declutter. Just enjoy it all, she says, and we can see her point.
And it turns out that there's even more shock news about our old house. Frances says she thinks that the new owners, Adam and Tatsiana, have got rid of our lovely walk-in shower, the one that we had installed about 15 years ago, and put in a bath instead, simply because they have two young children and Adam and Tatsiana prefer to give them baths, apparently.
Huh!!! We feel slightly offended, but I guess that once you've sold a house, the new owners can do what they want with them, can't they.
BUT IT JUST DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT, THAT'S ALL !!!!!!
flashback to life in our old house years ago
- I proudly showcase our lovely walk-in shower
And we can't help feeling - what madness!!!!
Our daughter Alison and her husband Ed, lived in a few houses in Denmark in their 6 years residence in Copenhagen. Danish houses pretty much exclusively have shower cubicles and no bath, and Ali and Ed just used to put a small plastic bath in the cubicle to bath their children in when they were small,
It isn't exactly rocket science, now, is it !!!!
21:00 We decide to go to bed on a programme from the series that's become our premier "go to bed feeling at peace with the world" option, engineered by watching "The Secret Life of the Forest" on Channel 5.
Who knew that wood-ants tolerate the presence in their nests of large numbers of another ant-species, so-called "shining guest ants", tiny little buggers who take up residence in the wood-ants' nests.
And they tolerate theses "guests", simply because unlike a lot of guests in the human world, these "shining guest-ants" actually do some useful work, eating the crumbs of the food that the wood ants drop, so that, as a result, wood-ants' nests are some of the tidiest nests in nature, which is nice.
When did YOU last have guests staying in YOUR house that ate up the crumbs that you drop on the floor - not for a good long while, I'm guessing !!!
And the wood-ants aren't tempted to eat the tiny little "shining guest ants", because, luckily, the little buggers have a repulsive taste, repulsive even to a fellow ant, so it's a win-win situation for all concerned. A good news story without a doubt, and we don't get many of those these days, that's for sure!
Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire, where the series is filmed, is apparently one of only 7 places in the UK which have special "Dark Sky Reserve" status, so amateur astronomers tend to congregate here to make their observations. The visitor centre here has telescopes permanently set up.
For the programme, some of these amateur astronomers point out the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to our own. It's 2.5 million light years away, and it's thought that our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with Andromeda several billion years from now, merging into one large galaxy.
Gosh, that sounds alarming! Luckily Lois has dozed off by this point, which will give me the chance to break the news to her gently over the coming weeks and months.
My goodness, that's what I call news!!!
What a crazy universe we live in !!!!!
22:00 The programme finishes. I wake Lois up and we hurry up to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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