Like ice cream for tonsils

Only in this case it's after having a tooth out.

Well last night was bloody miserable, I think I got maybe an hour's sleep in fits and starts and the pain was awful. The Dentist saw me at ten this morning and whipped out a tooth which had become infected; he showed me the long rooted little bugger and the x-ray of the abscess afterwards, in that dispassionate way of the men in blue coats (and believe me this was no Butlins...).

The mechanics of dental extraction under local anaesthetic brings us as close as we generally ever are to the morbid mechanics of our own mortal bodies. When you sense the tugging and the rocking and then the eventual pop of the tooth coming out, you feel like a machine that's just had a part pulled off. Like pulling a spark plug from a car engine.

The relief of having the pain removed for a couple of hours (even though the face felt ridiculously fat and frozen) was immense, but I had to go to Police HQ for my orientation for Saturday's Olympic event.We'll be starting at 6.00 am on Saturday although some colleagues will be getting there in the middle of the night to oversee the setup of barriers; the day for me will run until 2pm when one of my fellow Directors will take over and do the afternoon into the evening shift. I got the guided tour of the control room and the facilities and all the security stuff, and we shared the hope that it will be boring and uneventful. Emergency planning is all about hoping it never happens but being ready if it does.

Came home and the pain started, not as bad as before, and thanks to antibiotics, ibrufen and paracetamol it faded late afternoon whilst I was sleeping it off in a chair in the garden. Did a little work but felt exhausted from lack of sleep and two days of unremitting pain and pain killers so gave up.

Thought I deserved a little ice cream after that lot. Reminded me of eating it after I had my tonsils out as a kid. Have a feeling I may be asleep by nine o'clock tonight...