Basics

Back to basics today, with a photo from the only extra-curricular activity I undertook: a visit to the dentist. It struck me that these two instruments - the mirror and the probe - haven't changed in all the years of dentistry that began when I was seven and had my first filling. (All that soft, Glasgow water ...) Back then, drills were fearsome things driven by brown cords, vibrating so much that your head was filled with the noise and movement as they ground their laborious way into an offending tooth. The dentist wore a long white coat and the patient sat rather than lay to be operated on. At least I was spared the gas and air that had my friends return to school from dental appointments smelling of the gas fire, though the unconsciousness their mothers allowed them would have been preferable to the hideous awareness of my own procedures.

Today, however, there was no peering or probing. Merely an x-ray, which is actually torture with someone with as small a bite as I have. But so much of my dental geography is now concealed under crowns that I don't imagine probing and peering cuts it any more.

All was well, by the way ...