Week 1 - Saturday
To the dentist, my favourite thing to do on my day off. The narrator of
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus suggests that the rise of the Nazis
could have been predicted by noting the decline in the standards of dental
care in the years before: whereas in happier more liberal times the dentists
had patiently laboured to reconstruct bad teeth, as Weimar crumbled and the
storm clouds gathered they would simply yank them without any ado, like a
society summarily doing away with the misfits or the weak.
It's a nice conceit and one that always troubles me whenever I visit my own
dentist. He has no patience with weakness or cowardice. He describes
anaesthesia as 'The Jewish science' and rebukes me for bleeding on his
jackboots. He watches 'Marathon Man' in between patients... No, but I
have heard people whimpering and pleading inside his room, and him
screaming at them for their wetness. He chased one of them out on the
landing yelling at them for wasting his time. He's actually OK with me, as
after my first couple of visits I became more scared of him than of the
pain. Actually his worst vice is starting a really interesting
conversation just when I can't talk back. I reckon a lot of them go into
it for the sake of the captive audience for their monologues. (Maybe one of
the reasons there aren't enough dentists now is they all discovered internet
journals...)
There's nothing wrong with my teeth but I had to get a check-up in case he
struck me off his list for not visiting in a while, as is his wont. He's the
only NHS dentist left for miles around so I can't afford to lose him. He
spent most of this session ranting about the government. He did this the
first time I came, too - he could barely make a living back then, and now
they've just introduced some new scheme which is going to make things much
worse for them, so even though he's committed to the NHS he probably won't
be able to afford not to turn private for long. Whenever he drills a tooth
now he imagines it's the prime minister's head...
...A Thomas Mann reference describing a trip to the dentist? Was that a bit
flash? It can't be helped. Whenever I'm forced to work the gratuitous
literary references tend to increase to bolster my ego.
And why not? To hell with money, status, crappy job or joblessness,
achievement or lack thereof - deep down everyone knows that whoever has read
the most books is the best person - and, actually, and without a shadow of a
lie, the happiest.
I may never have earned more than ___ a week in my life and that rarely for
longer than a couple of months; I may be 35 and riding on buses; I may have
failed in every conceivable way by the world's standards. But I've read___
and ___ and ____ and dear old_____. Therefore I win.