A message from my eldest: the company they work for is having a works outing, an all-expenses-paid few days in Brighton. I mentioned my eldest a few weeks ago: they’d bought a motorbike. And now they’re driving down on it, which means I’ll get to see it. Maybe even vroom the throttle a bit. I had extracted a promise that I could have a go on it myself, but privately I acknowledge I won’t be: I haven’t driven a bike for around 20 years, when I realised that I was the bodywork and that maybe parents of three small children shouldn’t go zooming around town on a Moto Guzzi. There would also be the problem of insurance, because, well, do I have to explain the problem of insurance? Also, their helmet probably wouldn’t fit me, I’d skid on a pile of leaves or something, and it would all be very unpleasant.
As it is, I feel very unpleasant, by which I mean I have a rotten cough and a cold and something bad is beginning to happen in my mouth: the kind of all-over itch and sensitivity that suggests the beginnings of gum disease. This is not something I’m looking forward to. No one does, of course, but the idea of going to a dentist fills me with a feeling of existential dread. Financial dread, too, come to think of it. I haven’t been to the fang doctor since I cracked a tooth about four or five years ago. It was all handled relatively sensitively, but I wouldn’t count it as one of the better experiences of my life.
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