End of the week

Every day is filled with something isn’t it? Amid the excitement and the fascinated horror of watching government ministers depart one by one and Boris lying to his back teeth, we get on with every day stuff.

I was struck by Susie Dent’s Word of the Day, though, which is ‘filipendulous’ (19th century): hanging by a thread. Love it.

So, yesterday morning was like many other and we pottered about at home. We were so engrossed in our jobs though – John tinkering with his car and me faffing about with washing – that John had to rush his lunch so that we could get to the dental hospital in Birmingham in time in the afternoon.

Typical, of course, we had left with just enough time to get there at the appointed time – what we hadn’t catered for were hold-ups on the M6. Doggone it!! We were sat in the middle of a traffic jam, stationary, with no obvious reason for the stoppage.

I suggested to John that he phone ahead to let the clinic know we’d be late. “How long are you going to be?” asked the girl on the other end of the phone. John shrugged. Who knew? We didn’t. “About half an hour?” he offered, hopefully. “That’ll be too late,” she said. “Shall I re-book your appointment?” Yes, OK then, re-book……

As soon as the words were out of John’s mouth, the traffic started moving. And moving….. and then flowing beautifully. No sign of what had caused us all to stop at all. “Do you want to phone her back, John? To let her know we’re actually on our way will be only ten minutes late?” He shook his head. It wouldn’t matter, we’d be there.

Hahahahaha……… the efficiency of the NHS, eh? When we arrived, there was no record of John’s appointment. “Which clinic are you going to?” the receptionist wondered. Well, it should be dentistry – John has got a wonky tooth. The receptionist looked some more and there was clearly a problem. “Sorry, you’ve been discharged.”

‘Scuse me? I explained that I’d emailed to flag up the issue John had. Perhaps they could find the email? No. I paced up and down for a bit and was invited to sit down while they tried to sort it out.

In fact, they were very good. There had been a mix-up. John had been booked into the oral medicine clinic, not dentistry. And it was true, he had been discharged from that specific clinic. However, they had a doctor who would see him and then we could take it from there.

A jolly good inspection of John’s tooth suggested a root canal filling or extraction would be needed, and a promise on offer that it would be dealt with one way or another next week. So all’s well that ends well. Except that we were a lot longer than we expected and came away with things to follow up, like asking John’s own dentist to send the x-rays they’d done and contact the GP for blood test results. But we’re on our way.

We went straight over to Michael’s for tea afterwards which was lovely. We were both tired, so to have our tea cooked for us was a real treat. I played with the children of course, and helped put them to bed, which always fills my heart.

Today, being a Friday, I was due to go to yoga. However, my addled brain can’t quite cope with following instructions at the moment, so I decided to stay at home. I pottered into the garden to water some of the plants – and that was it then. I was there for the rest of the morning, dead-heading, pruning, weeding and generally enjoying the lovely flowers I’ve got growing in the garden at the moment. Picked a few:

For some reason, I popped back indoors….where I could hear something very exciting. I made my way into the garage and yes, I could believe my ears! John had got the Lotus running. “Sorry about the exhaust fumes,” he said. “I don’t care!” I replied. “I am just so excited that you’ve got the car going!” Did a little dance.

This afternoon we went to visit Pete and Dawn, which was a welcome respite. We had a smashing time, chatting away in the garden for a couple of hours. Pete, mind you, wasn’t best. He is suffering from a bad back, having put it out earlier in the week. Eeeeh, we didn’t all half feel like we were crocks, with all our aches and pains.

In other news, Covid is now infecting 1 in 25 people. The news suggests this isn’t too bad because all those hospitalised are generally suffering with other conditions…….. well, that’s OK then.

Take care everyone. God bless.