Adventures in the Ivory Trade

Well, that was a way to spend an hour in a chair. It involved the virus that I took with me, and everything else that I encountered there: including anaesthetic and drilling and pain - lots of pain, and I am not actually a wimp about these things - and confusion and more anaesthetic and orifice-seeking corkscrews and bafflement and intermediate X-rays and anxieties about perforated roots and second opinions and more drilling and actually a little more pain and machines that measure resistivity and go beep and ultimately success of a sort, to the point where the tooth is still in my head and I have to go back next month.

Oh, and gutta percha. Which one of us has been pronouncing wrong all these years: which he thought was me, and I was prepared to believe him because I'd never heard it said before today, I'd only ever read it, but actually my dictionary is on my side. Tho' I had no idea it was a tool of contemporary dentistry, or indeed contemporary anything; I would've guessed that the industry died when they started making golf-balls out of modern materials. But no! Dentists use it to fill root canals, seemingly. When they can find 'em.

And this evening I have to introduce China Mieville and Helen Oyeyemi to the Lit & Phil, which ought to be a treat but frankly? Right now I'd rather go to bed.