A Cloudless Day

I had my teeth fixed yesterday. I had a filling replaced and a broken tooth reconstructed. My dentist said it wouldn't hurt much so I waved away the injection.  He was right, but I find it odd that he equates the thrill of a drillbit gouging a nerve with "feeling cold". I lay back in the chair and looked at the frog. I've been coming to this practice for over twenty five years now but I'd never noticed him before. He's a melancholy frog. He sympathises. His mouth is the long, thin line where two pieces of metal meet in the arm of the anglepoise lamp and his eyes are the screws that hold it together.

My pa-in-law has been moved to a ward where they strictly enforce the rule about two visitors to a bed, so I left Ailz and her mother there and went and sat in the hospital garden, by the fountain- and did a crossword puzzle. It was a cloudless day- and there were a lot of us out there, basking in the sun. The others were mostly staff and patients from one of the psychiatric wards.