Yeah, it’s a Snagglepuss quote. It seemed much more clever when I originally thought up the title and mistakenly thought his name was Snaggletooth, because I have a bit of a snaggletooth going on myself.
Saturday was shaping up to be a pretty nice day, lots of relaxing and lounging in the garden, and I’d been to the shops and bought my weight in meat to get grilling on the barbecue again. One of my friends conveniently forgot to tell us it was his birthday so we decided he should at least see everyone and we managed to drag him along. The evening was going fine until I bit into something (I forget what) and I remember hearing and feeling a very odd crunching. I spat whatever it was out and thought it looked suspiciously like a piece of tooth, and after a quick scan of my teeth with my tongue, I got that sinking feeling when it turned out I was right. It’s the corner of the back half of one of my front teeth, so it’s not visibile at least, but I’m very aware of it and it feels horrible and sharp. It means finding a dentist now as I’m no longer with my old NHS one, but the chances of finding another one are very slim. I tried looking at every dentist within a 15 miles radius on Sunday and not one of them is taking new patients – some health service eh? It means I’m going to have to go private unfortunately. Dentists cost enough on the NHS, let alone private, so it’s not a trip I’m looking forward to for lots of reasons now.
My knee is still pretty much ruined. It’s a lot better in some respects, for example I can walk up and down stairs much more easily, and I can get up the lane to my car in the mornings, but in others it’s really not much better at all. I tried a few very light, very narrow changes of stance earlier, as if I were doing some basics drills in a TSD lesson, but within about five minutes I was aching and frustrated. It feels like it’s going to be at least another week yet before I’m back in a dobok, and then it’s going to be very light and controlled. I can’t imagine how long it’s going to be before I can fight again, I can’t even imagine driving off my left leg to attack, the thought of the pain makes my skin crawl. It’s yet another beautiful evening tonight and once again I’m stuck indoors, dosed up on ibuprofen, leg in the air and thoroughly fed-up. And until I find out if the dentist will accept a kidney in payment for my tooth being repaired, I’m too scared to eat anything even remotely firm. Is this the sort of evening I have to look forward to when I’m an old man??
I’ve still been going along to most of the training sessions that I can’t take part in, which is ok but no substitute for training myself. I was lucky enough to be able to help the kids out on Sunday, I helped them start learning their Ho Sin Sool (self-defence) which I really took a lot from, but watching all my friends and training partners fight for the last hour was really quite hard to take.
*puts the violin down*
That’s plenty of feeling sorry for myself for now, I’ll try for something a bit more upbeat the next time, I promise! I’ll leave you with a lovely song I’ve recently re-discovered and have been listening to a lot.
Guns N Roses – Don’t Cry
Go to the emergency dentist at your local hospital. I did that when I wasn’t with a dentist and had a problem, they should see you there and then.