The bad news, the even worse news, the good news, and a PS
[Remember I wrote this yesterday. Monday. And then discovered I’d left it behind at the mews when I went back to the cottage and tried to post it. See yesterday’s entry: friendly, harmless, and thick as two short planks. But you don’t imagine I’m going to waste all this work, do you?! Think of it as a tiny piece of time travel: for the next few minutes, it’s still Monday . . . ]
The bad news: well, okay, I suppose first I am obliged to say that it’s good news that my horrible toothache has localised. Yes, it’s a white-hot jackhammer right there. Ever noticed the way the tooth with the ache in sticks UP from the rest of your jaw, so you can’t chew even on the other side? I really like scrambled eggs-they’re one of my favourite comfort foods-but eventually you want to stop needing comfort and get on.
So, with my admirably localised toothache throbbing ably away, I rang up the dentist this morning sharp at 9 and said, right, so, it’s localised, when can I COME IN?
Oh, we’re choc-a-bloc*, she replied blithely. You have an appointment for Wednesday [originally for something else entirely], we’ll see you then.
WEDNESDAY??! -Er, I said, trying desperately to stay polite, you know I can’t eat.
Oh, well, you just have a lot of nice smoothies for a couple of days**, she said, and we’ll see you on Wednesday.
And rang off.
What is the sound ‘gobsmackedness’ makes?
Gods I hate these dentists. Unfortunately they’re specialists, for people with teeth like mine, ie bloody awful, they do have a reputation for doing what they do well, and they’re local. Which last is an important consideration when I tend to leave their office on my knees. And which is why I continue to allow them to grind their hob-nailed boot into my neck. Which means that leaving their office on my knees means I’m doing pretty well really. And have I mentioned recently that they cost a fortune? If you want to make your 90% organically fed***, hauled an hour down the road to the homeopathic vet who costs twice as much as the allopathic locals, hellhounds look cheap . . . have some dental work done.****
I need to get to work on the next novel fast.
So, okay, that was the bad news. And that’s bad enough. The even worse news is that the root canal from a meagre few weeks ago is acting up. Root canals don’t act up; there’s nothing to act. Theoretically. If you have post-root-canal pain, it means the root canal didn’t take. And I believe the only thing left to happen then is that they rip the whole works out. So you’ve paid £1,000,000 for nothing, AND you lose the tooth. (Which just by the way is another appointment, more money, and more pain. And if you do this too often you’re quite soon going to be looking at either plates or implants.) Not to mention the ordeal of having had the root canal. Subsequent broken hands being optional.
I can’t remember if I posted in here or not, right after it was done, that I didn’t like the way it was healing and I had my doubts. Then it seemed to calm down and I believe in letting sleeping teeth lie.
But it’s now throbbing away with that abscess-pressure feeling. It could, I suppose, still be some kind of exotic referred pain. Unfortunately I doubt it. I think it’s likelier that it’s another manifestation of the fact that my teeth are from Another Dimension. And they don’t like it here.
The good news: so I tied my head up in an assortment of scarves-cold air on sore teeth not being the best way to amplify one’s enjoyment of one’s morning perambulent epic-and hellhounds and I sallied forth. And as we parked beside one of our favourite footpath markers-favourite because it’s pointing down one of our favourite green lanes-something about it caught my eye. And looking more closely I saw a new little white plastic plaque on the post that says RESTRICTED BYWAY. And underneath there is a series of little symbols for walkers, riders, etc . . . and the little symbol for motorbikes has been crossed out.
HURRAH.
Okay, well, I hope there aren’t any passionate off-road bikers here. I don’t like the things anyway: they make way too much noise, far more, for example, than is allowed on city streets, and here they are out here polluting the country. And they stink, and that’s air pollution, and I don’t know how their particulate emission ratings and what have you compare with on-road machines, but it’s a lot more offensive out in the countryside, where one of the reasons you’re there is to get away from exhaust fumes. They also freaking well destroy any landscape they run over: they’re sometimes worse than bigger stuff, tractors and Land Rovers and so on, because they have narrower tyres and they go faster and therefore dig in deeper-and also you can probably walk in a tractor rut. A motorbike rut is just an ankle-breaker.
Last and not least, the riders are usually rude. I’ve been top-to-toed in sprayed mud more than once, by get-out-of-our-way-we-don’t-give-a-dead-rat motorbike riders. Even if there’s no mud to be had, they still automatically hog the best bit of path-which is probably badly rutted by their ministrations-and if that means you have to jump for a hedgerow, well, you’re only a pedestrian. You wouldn’t expect an engine-driven two-wheeled triumph of modern technology to stop, would you? For a little thing like courtesy and shared use of the way? Oh yes, and they’re worse in groups, like they’re in a competition to be the biggest vandal. Whoever wins gets to wear the necklace of severed ears that week. I’ve had mornings where I might as well have given up and gone home, with all the hedgerow-leaping that’s been necessary. Do they behave like this when passing horses?
I admit two or three out of ten of these blots on the human escutcheon do stop, or slow down, and nod as they pass, or even say hello if they’ve stopped for a recce and have their helmets off. (I grit my teeth and say hello back.) That doesn’t solve the noise-air-landscape***** problems. But if off-road motorbikes were both occasional and polite I’d put up with it.
But this section of ‘my’ territory, my hellhound-walking, within-a-few-miles-in-the-car range, has suffered a plague of the things for several years now, and it’s been getting worse. The green lane I referred to is savagely rutted. It runs for a while beside a private wood******. The private wood has a fence around it. (Yes. Really. All 1,000,000,000 acres of it. Wow.) Now the first time the bikers went through the fence by the lane and discovered all the lovely cross-country-scramble possibilities just inside, the fence may have been knocked down by storms and falling trees and so on. But they really set up shop in there, laying out Choose Your Own Adventure bike routes, and leaving their rubbish around their campfire sites. And when the wood owner had the fence repaired . . . they cut it down. And this happened more than once. Do I know that it was bikers who cut the fence? Was I there when they got out their wire clippers? No. But I certainly saw bikers reoccupying the space they’d claimed while the fence was down the first time, and I’m afraid I don’t consider my conclusion-jumping unwarranted. And, just by the way, there wouldn’t be much point in a walker cutting the fence: we can always get through it if we’re minded. And no, actually, I don’t. I’m pretty law-abiding, as previously observed: I want to stay on good terms with my neighbours, and keep walking.******
There’s a big field-and I mean big-about three-quarters of a mile long and sixty yards wide********-at the top of the wood, locally known as the Gallops. It makes a very good gallop because it is flat, tough, and free-draining: even shod horses can’t tear it up. When I was exercising polo ponies, we used to gallop on it, and I still get a thrill seeing some other person who still has a horse to ride (sigh) having a good hurtle: I particularly love the eager look on the horse’s face, which is something you don’t get to see when you’re on top (although the ears tell the story). Sigh. Anyway, lately there’ve been motorbike races on it. Twelve or fifteen of the damn things . . . time to jump for the hedgerow again. You can’t put your hands over your ears because your hands are full of leashes, and leaping is somewhat obstructed by hellhounds trying to hide behind you because they don’t like the noise either, or possibly the smell, which hangs in great revolting clouds and makes my throat burn, and Chaos cough. It’s like the noise they make: I can’t believe that smoke is within any legal limit. When they’re not racing they hang around in clumps, revving their engines.
I’ve been noticing there’ve been fewer of Isengard’s progeny around lately, and I’ve been delighted without thinking about it too hard; many things go in seasons or spasms, and I’ll enjoy what respite I’m offered. And now, today . . . a whole rash of little white motorbike-prohibiting plaques, here in the heartland of motorbike abuse. I know this won’t actively prevent them using ways they’re banned from, but it’s a very welcome indication of the county council’s decisions on the matter. There must have been more people than I who’ve complained-presumably more than there are bikers. Democracy in action. Or something. Squeaky wheel oil application possibly. I don’t care, so long as it’s worked.
And the postscript: The copyedit corrections for CHALICE went in today. Champagne for supper. (Well, champagne doesn’t need chewing.) And that’s pretty much the end for doing any work on it. All that’s left is page proofs, which involve outbreaks of weeping and moaning when you catch all the things it’s now too late to change.
Okay. On to ELEMENTALS FIRE. And then PEGASUS. I want that attic floor. And the organic dog food. And the champagne.
* I wonder if my resistance to putting ‘k’s on choc-a-bloc is because it looks like something to EAT this way?
** Three, actually
*** And they get through a surprising amount of food for dogs that run away and hide from most offers of it.
**** And I finally got the plans from the architect for the Third House. AAAAAAAUGH. Have I told you about this yet? All I want is a simple little weight-bearing floor in the attic. The Third House is a bungalow, so its attic floor is only there to hold up the ceiling below it. And I need to put lots and lots and lots and lots of boxes of backlist books^ on it-which are already there, so I need to get the floor braced and buttressed before the ceiling falls in. But it turns out I have about a quarter of a million miles of red tape in building regs to satisfy first . . . which has meant an architect. Architects are not cheap. All the damn building-reg permissions, even after you’ve got plans they’ll approve, are not cheap. And then-finally!-you get to pay for the actual construction work. Which is not cheap. Especially when there’s a whole lot more of it than you were counting on, when you just wanted a nice little weight-bearing floor in your attic. . . .
^ Although a good two-thirds to three quarters of these are Peter’s.
***** I admit shod horses can do a number on landscape too. And a hunt galloping across a wet field can destroy it. The ridge behind the old house-that village being in the bottom of a long thin valley-had the local hunt gallop down the length of it once at the beginning of the season one year and, I am not joking, it was impassable till the following summer. But this is comparatively rare (fortunately). On a passage-per-passage basis give me a shod horse to a motorbike any day, and I don’t think this is merely because I’m also a horse-lover.
****** Which is another issue. With the new laws about walkers’ rights, we are in theory allowed to walk through this wood. Except somehow or other it manages to be ‘closed’ (as per posted sign) a good eight months of the year. One day in my copious free time I’m going to ring up the footpath people and see if I can find out what the system really is.
******* Okay, caveat: when the wood is marked closed, I stay out. I may grumble, but I stay out. When it’s open, I’ll go over the fence if I’m not near one of the gates. I stay on the paths, but there are lots and lots of paths and only two gates.
******* Any of you who are remembering that I’ve said I’m rotten at estimating distances: I’ve just had Peter measuring on the map for me. Peter is good at distances. And reading maps.