A Visit to the Dentist

Last week I visited my dentist for my periodic dental check-up and came away, much to my surprise, quite elated. Dental check-ups are not an activity that I can claim to be able to take in my stride and my attendances at dental check-ups tend not be nearly as frequent as they ought to be. Received wisdom about the frequency of dental check-ups has equivocated over the years, - sometimes declaring six-monthly check-ups to be essential for good dental care and other times conceding that check-ups might be undertaken at longer interval such as a year, for example, without serious detriment to one's long-term dental health. This division of opinion as to whether six monthly or yearly check-ups are the more beneficial has been a welcome gift to a phobic like me whose fear of dental check-ups is incurable. With blatant opportunism, I have seized on the apparent rift in expert opinion, to allow myself to conclude that my own check-ups could be made at an even more extended interval of fifteen months instead of twelve months. I haven't of course taken care to appraise my dentist of this unilateral decision of mine to institute fifteen monthly check-ups. Consequently, at regular intervals of about six months or so, his practice continues to send me polite communications reminding me of the imminence of my dental check-up and inviting me to attend at my earliest convenience. I steadfastly ignore the first several of these entreaties in pursuit of my own agenda of fifteen monthly check-ups, although I am aware that this practice might well lead even some close friends to shake their heads and conclude wearily that this is simply procrastination on my part, designed to disguise a phobia of dental treatment. I choose on the other hand to characterise it, perhaps rather grandly, as my iron determination to adhere unflinchingly to my aim of extending the intervals between dental check-ups. Unsurprisingly therefore, when the usual series of reminders arrived in the post just prior to my last check-up, I carefully ignored the first several, until deciding in due course that it was at last timely to make an actual appointment with the dentist. As usual, on the day of the appointment, I was assailed, almost from the moment that I woke up, by a feeling of foreboding, which precedes all my encounters with the dentist. On my way up to the surgery I even tried to invoke the power of prayer to ensure an easy passage through the ordeal that I imagined awaited me. But the efficacy of prayer seldom offers much hope to frayed nerves, and I arrived at the surgery in a state of despondency and somewhat disappointed that prayers had proved so futile in my particular case. Mercifully, I didn't have to wait long before the nurse came out to escort me into the dentist's presence. My dentist greeted me cheerfully as usual. He is the personification of charm and good manners, and when it comes to examining teeth, he happens to have the gentlest touch that I have encountered amongst dentists - and I have been under the care of several over the years, including one who easily qualified as the "Butcher of Walthamstow". As I reclined in the dentist's chair and closed my eyes, as is my wont when undergoing dental examination, I could feel the dentist carefully probing my teeth and uttering the ritual intonations that dentists resort to during dental check-ups: upper right four, upper right five, upper right six missing, etc. They made little sense to me but I apprehended that they might possibly be a damning verdict on the state of my teeth. After what appeared an eternity, which in reality was no more than five minutes, the dentist stepped back and with a most pleasant smile announced that everything seemed to be alright, and that he didn't think we needed to anything to them, - meaning my teeth -, 'this time'. It took a moment or two before the import of his words sank in. If there were such an emotion as 'stunned happiness' then I had just experienced it and I was having some difficulty containing my joy. I should have remained calm and thanked the dentist politely but I did no such thing, and probably to my dentist's horror, disgraced myself by bestowing on him an undignified profusion of thanks, accompanied by several incoherent expressions of gratitude. The dental nurse, possibly mistaking my emotion for distress, came to my aid and escorted me out to the receptionist, to complete the formalities of form-filling and charge-payment. I left the surgery in a state that some dental surgeons might describe as 'post check-up' euphoria. Its effect was to cram my head with all kinds of joyful thoughts and as the euphoria subsided, the realisation gradually dawned on me that the most exhilarating moments in life were not necessarily engendered by extraordinary events such as one's rare achievements or even rarer strokes of good fortune but quite often by the ordinary and mundane things in life such as a visit to the dentist.

Tale of an Idiosyncrasy

One of my recreational activities, for some time now, has been that of jogging. Despite being a long-time jogger, I have to confess that jogging remains an activity that does not come easily to me. As a jogger my efforts are risible and my jogging is probably best described as "shambling". I cannot claim to be naturally athletic and somehow the fitness that most joggers acquire through regular exercise eludes me. To compensate for my natural lack of fitness, I have been compelled to resort to such desperate stratagems as running in as lightweight a running attire as possible and wearing the thinnest-soled trainers available in sports-shops. The latter of course has a drawback: lightweight, thin soled, trainers are not really considered to be best suited for running. The received wisdom about appropriate footwear for running has it that they should be specially moulded to provide support for the arches of the foot and have soles which are stout enough to absorb the shock that the human frame receives as each foot lands on a hard road surface. Such shoes however, could scarcely be my preferred choice since the thought of running in stout-soled shoes rekindles in me all the painful memories I have of gasping for breath whilst running in army boots in my younger days as a serving soldier. I always regarded it then as a form of torture inflicted on less fit soldiers like me by the Army's sadistic PT instructors. I therefore studiously ignored all good advice about the correct running shoes and remained steadfast in wearing the minimalist footwear that I fondly imagined to be performance-enhancing for non-athletes like me. I may well have persisted in pursing this course of idiosyncrasy had it not been for a chance event that normally need not have concerned me at all. The event itself was quite dreadful: a ram-raid on a sports-goods shop at Chingford Mount, - not very far from where I live in London. I happened to be walking past the shop and was quite saddened by the scene that I witnessed. The shattered shop-front and the ransacked interior of the shop were a grim testimony to what had occurred. I recognised the man standing in what remained of the shop-doorway as the owner of the shop. I had seen him before on my occasional visits to the shop with my late wife to get trainers for our grandchildren. The shop happens to be a family-run business and the courtesy and good manners of family members who serve in the shop had always made my shopping trips there a pleasant experience for me. Seeing the owner standing in front of his now devastated shop, I could not help feeling an overwhelming sense of sympathy, although what I did next was, I realise now to my embarrassment, something prompted more by an idle curiosity than my deeply felt sympathy: I asked the man what had happened, - a question that he had probably already been asked a dozen times that morning. To his great credit he retained his good manners, and even managed to raise a friendly smile as he informed me that the shop had been ram-raided in the night. Everything in his demeanour was a lesson in stoicism in the face of adversity which I found so touching that I felt it deserved some helpful gesture on my part in return, no matter how trivial. I decided therefore that this was the time to get the new trainers that I had been contemplating buying for some time but had hitherto procrastinated for various reasons. I walked into the shop and after trying out one or two pairs of trainers, selected a pair that was predictably of the thin-soled variety that I always preferred. This turned out, to my surprise, to be a pair of ladies' gym trainers, as the owner soon informed me when I took the pair to the till for payment. I am not sure if my disappointment and confusion were all too obvious, but the owner felt obliged to offer to help me with the selection of a suitable pair of men's trainers. He showed me a couple of pairs which he recommended as being good quality as well as reasonably cheap. To my alarm both had the thick soles that I had always imagined to be inimical to my puny efforts at jogging. Not wishing to offend the shop owner, I rather hesitantly mentioned my absurd paranoia that thick soled trainers were akin to heavy army boots and would therefore prove my nemesis when engaged in jogging. If the good shop owner were perplexed by this bizarre assertion of mine, he did a remarkable job of keeping a straight face and maintaining his professional manner. With commendable forbearance he explained that there was no question of these shoes being heavy. They were ergonomically designed to be both light on the foot and provide maximum support for the foot's arches. Normally, I should have dismissed this explanation as typical sales talk but there was something disarming about this shop owner's obvious honesty which persuaded me that perhaps what I was being told was simply a frank comment on the merits of the trainers that deserved to be heeded. It was time, I felt, that I rose above my phobia and committed myself to using the kind of running shoe that was regarded by most sensible people as being the most appropriate one. Assailed as I was with lingering doubts, I willed myself to putting aside my reservations and agreed to the purchase of the trainers that the owner had recommended to me. I need not have tortured myself as to whether I had made the right decision. My trust in the shop owner's advice was fully vindicated. The shoes, as it happened, turned out to be the most comfortable as well as the most lightweight shoes that I had run in to-date. This happy outcome nevertheless gave me some food for thought. Rational beings like to believe that their actions are the result of rational thought. That I should have eschewed the use of what might be regarded as the ideal footwear for jogging for so long, appeared to me on reflection not so much a harmless idiosyncrasy as an illustration of irrational fears harboured by otherwise rational minds, - if such a generalisation might be permitted from my own particular example. Even more irksome to me was the realisation that my irrational fears were not dispelled by any application of rational thought on my part but rather by a chance random event, i.e. a ram-raid on a shoe shop. This realisation was itself quite unsettling in that it seemed to confront me with what I believed to be a different kind of irrationality, - that of the phenomenon known as chaos in which chance random events result in equally random unforeseen consequences. I am not sure however, whether my unease about my brush with chaos was well-founded. The very unpredictability of chaos has now become, I believe, the subject of a rigorous mathematical theory. One of its better known propositions concerns the so-called Butterfly Effect, which holds that a random event such as a butterfly fluttering somewhere on the edge of the world can be the determinant of a full-blown hurricane, thousands of miles away in mid-ocean. The romantic in me likes to believe that researchers into the Butterfly Effect will perhaps be able to construct a neat mathematical formula to explain how a random ram-raid on a shoe shop somewhere in Chingford, came to be the determinant of my burst of rational thought, which dispelled my phobia of thick soled trainers. The realist in me, on the other hand, tells me that such a formulation would be unlikely. I do harbour the hope however, that I might have provided mathematicians with some interesting empirical evidence, - that of my experiences with my trainers, with which to validate, or otherwise, their Chaos Theory. Perhaps my episode with the trainers had served some higher purpose after all.

Anno Domini or simply a year in the Common Era ?

The Daily Mail in one of its strident editorials, recently launched a vigorous attack on the BBC for its declared intention of using the terms "BCE" and "CE" rather than "BC" and "AD" when referring to a year within a given date, - "BC" and "AD" of course being the well familiar "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini", while "BCE" and "CE" are purportedly the more modern usage that stands for "Before Common Era" and "Common Era". The editorial for all its vitriol had a serious content that was thought provoking and struck a chord with me. I am a regular Daily Mail reader, - it is my daily paper of choice, although I am probably not a typical Daily Mail reader. I read the Mail for the quality of its journalism rather than its political stance, but of late I have been finding myself in sympathy with the Mail in at least one regard: its oft repeated contention that the BBC is prepared to disavow almost every custom or tradition of the British Isles, in order simply to be piously multicultural and "politically correct". I was therefore as exasperated as the Mail was indignant to learn that in future the BBC was to use the designations of BCE and CE instead of AD and BC. The BBC's explanation that it was simply conforming to modern usage did not carry with it the ring of conviction that it might have hoped. This is probably unsurprising given that the BBC's has in recent times introduced a number of practices which it may well characterise as being "modern" but which in fact are arguably motivated by "political correctness". One such "modern" practice that has now been introduced by the BBC, for example, is the use of the term "settled communities" when reporting on immigration issues. The BBC now prefers to use this bizarre Orwellian term to refer to the native English of the British Isles, rather than referring to them simply as "the English", lest the term "the English" should give offence to recent immigrants. Given this kind of BBC "modernity", I felt quite justified in being smugly confident that what I was witnessing was not at all a BBC about to embrace modernity, rather a BBC that was descending further into political correctness. I was however, soon to discover that I might have been over-hasty in decrying the BBC's actions in this instance, - for I have learned to my consternation that the terms CE and BCE, which I thought were indicative of the BBC's desire to disassociate itself from the Christian origins of the modern calendar, are in fact being used by no less a Christian body than the Jehovah's Witnesses. I am no stranger to Jehovah's Witnesses. A very charming lady regularly knocks on my door and engages me in a gentle discourse about the Bible, as well as inquiring about my well-being. She always ends these door-step conversations by pressing a copy of the Watchtower (a publication of the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation) in my hand and urging me to read some article therein together with some additional Bible reading that she recommends. Although I have little inclination to be a Jehovah's Witness, I quite look forward to my encounters with our Jehovah's Witness lady, not least because she is such a mild mannered gentle old soul. I also like reading the Watchtower as it contains not just the usual evangelical message but also articles about historical events and personalities referred to in the Bible, - such as for example, the kings of Persia and the Babylonian Empire. Interestingly, these articles always refer to dates as either CE or BCE. Seeing these articles referring to the Year of Our Lord as years of the Common Era, was to me an unexpected discovery and it just occurred to me that the BBC might have a point after all, and that CE and BCE might indeed be modern usage, and not as I had imagined an attempt on the part of the BBC to eschew practices that happen to be rooted in Christian tradition. It is always chastening to have to admit to one's misjudgements and I am obliged to do so this on this occasion since the BBC can clearly substantiate its case by reference, at the very least, to the Watchtower. But this episode is illustrative of how institutions, like individuals, are frequently judged on their reputation rather than their actions. The BBC has acquired a dubious reputation as an incorrigible recidivist when it comes to acts of political correctness. On this occasion the BBC's reputation would appear to have gone ahead of it and those like me who value the role of the BBC as a public service broadcaster might be forgiven for attributing to it motives that it did not in fact harbour.

Web Advertisements

The facility that the HTTP protocol provides for extracting the IP address of a Web user's computer and its subsequent use by many Websites to determine the country or the geographical region in which the computer is located, has always seemed to me to be an unnecessary intrusion of my privacy. For Websites of course this information is quite useful as it facilitates the display of highly targeted advertisements that focus on products and services that might be of local interest. However, a slightly unnerving aspect of this type of IP-targeted advertising is sometimes witnessed by those of us who occasionally visit foreign-language websites. Here we find to our alarm that the website's advertisements suddenly change of their own volition from the local language to English, as if sensing somehow that we are actually native English speakers. Of course as IT experts know, the website has no such sensory perception, - only the ability to associate the visitor's IP address with the appropriate geographical location and thereby determine his native language. I am a student of German and frequently visit the website of the German newspaper "Bild", with the aim of improving my German, - although that might well be a forlorn hope. To my chagrin, the "Bild" website is also given to this propensity to recast all its advertisements from their normal German into English, the instant it recognises my UK-based IP address. I am now resigned to this, and try to console myself with the thought that as the products being advertised are usually of the kind that have an international market, such as Nokia mobiles or BMW cars, their advertising can not really be characterised as deliberate targeting of unsuspecting UK-based web-surfers, - even when facilitated by the unscrupulous use of surreptitiously obtained IP-address data. However, I was not so sanguine about one particular advertisement that recently appeared on the "Bild" website' The advertisement was in fact a recruiting poster for the Royal Air Force, exhorting its readers to enlist and promising them a rewarding career as an airman. I found this poster bizarre. I could not imagine something so definingly British as service with the RAF being allowed to be sponsored by a foreign website. No rational being in the Air Force, I would have thought, would ever have authorised such a course of action , - not least because of the obvious potential for cruel parody that such a poster had, with its use of a German website as a recruiting agency for one of Her Majesty's services. In my mind's eye I could well see a Monty Pythonesque sketch, with a Prussian recruiting sergeant barking at cowering English recruits. It occurred to me that such thoughtless form of advertising could only be encountered in the wholly computerised world of the Internet, where human wisdom takes a back seat and so-called intelligent software undertakes action and decisions which in the real world belong to humans. Reflecting on this extra-ordinary advertisement and chuckling to myself with amusement as well as disbelief, I could not help wallowing in a certain schadenfreude at the amazing faux-pas that this advertisement had managed to commit. For it told me that the so called artificial intelligence of modern computers, that we humans are constantly reminded of, is in reality only a step away from artificial stupidity, as this astonishing advertisement has clearly demonstrated.

Holidays

It is quite well-known that when you are retired, the distinction between holidays and working days is blurred and holidays become nothing special as every day tends to be yet another rest day. Life as a continuous holiday is not necessarily a boon as some, as yet unretired, might imagine. It has some distinct drawbacks, not least of which is the state of oblivion it induces in which the individual is completely unaware of the many real world holidays such as Bank Holidays and school vacations which form an integral part of normal working life. Just how easy it is to succumb to this peculiar affliction became apparent to me only last week when I went on a shopping trip to Morrison's accompanied by our great-granddaughter Chenelle. Chenelle had been baby-sitting for her little nephew and niece, so they came along as well. Naturally with youngsters in tow, our first stop was not the store's groceries' section, rather its cafeteria. Two youngsters on school holidays, descending on a counter full of scrumptious goodies, can cause a mayhem that some individuals of a certain age can scarcely cope with. I was never good at controlling grandchildren. My late wife would never entrust me with them, on my own that is, without her presence to keep them in order. It was entirely predictable therefore that I should rapidly be beset, as I was on this occasion, with helpless bewilderment, - not knowing what the children had ordered, nor indeed what I had agreed they could order. As I came up to the cash desk, the man at the till noticed my obvious harassment and said sympathetically, "Well, they should be back at school tomorrow, shouldn't they ?". It took me a little while to comprehend the relevance of his comment. It had completely slipped my mind that schools had been on holidays for the past four weeks. I could only reply sheepishly that I had no idea when the kids were going back to school. "They are our grandchildren you see", I offered by way of an explanation. He laughed, "I have seen more kids in here with their grandparents in the last four weeks, than with their parents", he said, "it seems to be the thing to do". It didn't really surprise me that more kids had been there with their grandparents than their parents. And I had no doubt at all that their grandparents had derived immense pleasure from taking them there and giving them a "treat", as indeed I had. But I did wonder how many of these grandparents had had the awareness to realise that what was for them a normal day, was in fact a day in their schools' holidays for the kids. I like to think that I am not the only, uniquely sad, person who had lost his ability through old age, to distinguish between holidays and normal working days.

Birthdays

Remembering birthdays has always caused me some difficulties, and on occasion my indifferent memory has inevitably been the cause of some acute embarrassment and even guilt-ridden shame. My late wife Doris fortunately always kept a book in which she carefully listed all the birthdays. Every grandchild, son, family relation and close friend appeared in that book. Indeed the book has proved to be just the idiot's guide that I needed for remembering birthdays. So much so that I have been able to put it to good use over the past year and gain much kudos through it as someone who does not forget birthdays. Family members and friends have been genuinely pleased at of my thoughtfulness in remembering their birthdays and I have been basking inwardly in the feeling of warm glow that their expressions of appreciation have engendered. Yet last week, despite all the help available from the "birthday book" , I nearly slipped up with the date of our great-grand-daughter Jessica's birthday. Having got Jessica's birthday card ready, I phoned our grand-daughter Shelby on the Thursday of the week before last, to announce that I was going to take the card over to them, adding smugly that I knew Jessica's birthday was on the Friday and I did not want to miss it. To which Shelby informed me, rather deflatingly for my ego, that Jessica's birthday was actually that Thursday rather than the Friday. Squirming with embarrassment, I blurted out that I had got the date from Nan's birthday book and never imagined it would be wrong , but Shelby knew exactly why I had got it wrong. Apparently, she had had a conversation every year with Nan about the date of Jessica's birthday and every year she had had to remind her that it was the 25th of August and not the 26th. Quite clearly Shelby's reminders had gone unheeded and Nan's birthday book had remained steadfastly unaltered as far as Jessica's birthday was concerned. It was of course all my own fault. I should have expected something that, - after all these are the endearing ways of grandmothers that make them so lovable.

Reflection

This is a blog entry on a rather personal note and not all connected with MCT-Mass-Writing project activity, - but a note nonetheless that I feel compelled to make at this particular time. It has been just over a year since my wife Doris passed away and I cannot really say that I have coped with bereavement as easily as I had hoped I would have done, - being as I am, an adult of 71 years. Of course, my family have been the greatest comfort to me in getting through my sad times. I hate even to think how difficult it might have been otherwise, had I not had their support and their concern for my well being. At the time of the funeral, the vicar had said to me that it takes something like 18 months to get over a bereavement. I had been disbelieving of that, - imagining that whilst that may be true of the grandchildren, who would undoubtedly miss their nan, I as an adult of 71 years would do better than that. I now realise that the vicar was right. Each one of us copes with his bereavement in his own way. For me bereavement, amidst its sorrow, has also been about an intense feeling of missing someone constantly. Friends and family often ask me solicitously if I am lonely. I am not in the least bit lonely but I have this intense feeling of missing Doris at every turn, whether it is in the morning when I am making myself a cup of coffee, or hoovering the front room or even shopping at Morrison's. The feeling that someone, who was always by my side and whose presence in my vicinity I had always taken for granted, should no longer be there, is a feeling of sad bewilderment and even helplessness that is difficult to describe. Certainly I had not experienced it before, either with the death of my mother or my father, both of whom passed away some years ago. I harbour every hope that I will in time get over my bereavement, not least because I have always believed in the old maxim of "picking yourself up and carrying on". Perhaps my memories of Doris and those of our years together, ever increasing in preciousness to me, and which often give me a feeling of both happiness and elation, will give me the strength to "carry on", as they say.