Out of circulation for a while visiting various medical practitioners.
Managed to avoid the usual moralistic GP and got a nice Scottish locum instead.
Checked the old BP using the acoustic sphygmomanometer, wrote out a script and sent me on my way after a discussion mostly concerning the various regions of Scotland.
A very pleasant $55-worth.
We don't get a lot of choice of quacks out here in the sticks and they do tend to be judgmental.
As in: if they suspect you're not doing 110% to look after your health, then whatever befalls you is your own fault and they're not interested in providing help.
I mean is it any of the mechanic's business if I want to drive my car off a cliff?
Of course, with the quacks, they can't see that it's in their own interest that folks like me aren't always as health conscious as we should be.
What would they do for patients then?
(Just like the cops depend on the existence of crims to justify their own.)
And look at all the tax on beer and tobacco.
Surely some of that must go back into the med system and so pay their salaries.
Anyhow, not long after I got back with my BP script, I took the highly dangerous step of eating some jelly babies.
Half way through biting the head off my favourite dark red one, out comes this huge stone-like thing that turns out to be the remains of a filling from c.1976.
So today, it was off to see Frank the Dennis.
Now Frank is another (as people say, I'm told wrongly) bouilloire de poissons.
No moralising here.
In fact, he asked me if I had any jelly babies left and could he have one.
Then straight down to business with the super-glue and laser gun thing.
Admittedly it's harder to be chatty with the Dennis than the quack, but Frank seems to have learned the peculiar variety of English that ensues when you have a mouth full of metal instruments and clamps.
Like "erg rang i'g gogin!" (Ferk, Frank, I'm choking!)
I like the guy and felt the $185 fee well earned.
Notes to K. Rudd:
(a) whack a 100% tax on jelly babies and put the profits into the public dental system.
(This will also help discourage binge jelly baby eating.)
(b) ban all TV shows that involve gratuitous consumption of jelly babies.
(That Dr Whom would be a good place to start.)
(c) make this compulsory for all Australian school kids.
Sledge
