Do you ever get that feeling that you are in completely the wrong place? I did yesterday while sitting in a café.

It all started at the beginning of the week, when I started to feel a little discomfort from my teeth. On the whole I have fairly healthy teeth, but I do have one particular tooth which has given me problems at regular intervals over the years. When chewing or brushing I could feel a little bit of an ache from the area of the offending tooth, and so made an appointment to visit my dentist. Unfortunately, he could not fit me in until the end of the week (apparently even dentists suffer from a Christmas rush!), and by the time of my visit the level of pain had risen to such that I was taking paracetamol in order to sleep.

“Ah Yes” he says, “It’s that upper right third again. It has become infected and the infection has travelled down the nerve into the gum and surrounding tissue in the cheek and neck”. He then went on to explain (in that I’ve been to dental school way) that it is not actually the tooth that’s causing me the pain, but this infection of the surrounding tissue.

After checking for the 58th time that I was not allergic, he prescribed a course of penicillin tablets to clear up the infection, and booked me in for root canal work. The procedure apparently comprises of drilling out the nerves in the tooth, and down into the jaw bone, and then inserting a post into the hole. This is a piece of brightly coloured ceramic with a long metal tail. The tail is passed down the hole where the root was and into the jaw to anchor the tooth, and a new crown built around the ceramic top. I need three of these in the tooth (to replace the three root canals present), but unfortunately “It is too late to post in time for Christmas” (yes even dentists don’t have a sense of humour), so the operation is scheduled for between Christmas and New Year.

Now these posts look a lot like the capacitors that we used to solder onto circuit boards when I used to work in electronics, but unfortunately the dentist tells me that these will not make me USB compatible! He also tells me that there is no certainty that this procedure will be 100% successful. Sometimes it is not possible to identify all of the root canals, or drill out all of the infected canal, and sometimes the drill (which is micro small) can beak off inside the tooth where it can’t be retrieved. We then have our regular conversation where I ask if it would not be better to just pull the tooth and prevent any future problems from it. “Oh no, it’s always better to try to save the tooth” he always replies with the certainty of one who does not have the said regularly throbbing tooth in his mouth…

[I seem to have wandered away from the point of this post (as in blog entry, not tooth implant), so back to the subject of being in the wrong place…]

I live just outside a small market town. Its shops supply most of the everyday needs, but if you need anything a bit special, out of the ordinary, or just plain unusual, you need to travel to the much larger town about 30 miles away. Hence I found myself in this larger town yesterday in the name of Christmas shopping.

About mid morning it was time for me to take my next penicillin tablet; these are the size of something you would normally see RAF technicians strapping to the underside of an aircraft, so you need to have a drink in order to swallow one. With this in mind started searching for a coffee shop or similar establishment. Now I am not overtly familiar with the beverage vendors of the town, but shortly passed a small, but clean looking café which was not too busy.

I entered and walked up to the counter where one of the staff greeted me with the enquiry “Are you eating in?” “Yes please”, I responded, only to be told “Then you take a seat at the table and someone will take your order there”. From her glare I realised that I had obviously made the largest faux pas possible in café society.

I took a seat and ordered a coffee and doughnut (ever since I was a kid I’ve had this hankering to be a New York cop), and suddenly realised that I was the only person there who did not know every other person present!

As I waited for my order to arrive, each new customer would be greeted with the likes of “Hello Anne, you’re early today”, or “Hello Brian, the usual egg and chips?” I was expecting George Wendt to walk in at any minute to a universal cry of “Norm”!

There were several conversations going on across tables, jibes about who was paying for who else’s order, enquiries about how their Jack was now – and has he had the operation yet?, people asking other tables if their Monica is coming for Christmas this year; but the most disconcerting thing was the way people kept being invited to some form of back room to conduct whatever nefarious activities occurred in there.

As I looked out of the window, I noticed a Cash Converters opposite, with all the chavs busy buying and selling stuff and the victims of advance fee fraud popping in to use the Western Union facilities, I suspected I knew where most of the café’s clientele came from. Indeed as the person known as Sharon left “to get my old mans present”, she crossed the street and walked straight in there!

I ate my doughnut (which I was surprised to find was cooked to order and still warm), and swilled down by tablet with the remainder of my coffee, paid the bill (not knowing the exact cost of your order and having the exact money available for it is apparently also frowned upon), and made good my escape before the police raid I was convinced must be imminent.

Post Script

Earlier today, as I was walking upstairs I heard my mobile phone ring (which was downstairs). Turning round to go back down to answer it, I lost my footing and fell down several steps, landing on my coccyx. So not only do I have a pain in the neck, but now have a pain in the backside as well! While I don’t think I have done any permanent damage, it is still sore enough to mean that now I am sat down in front of the keyboard, I don’t intend to move for the rest of the day. But on the plus side - there is a Kylie Minogue concert on TV this afternoon, so I am quite content to sit and watch that!