THE CATCHER AND THE EARRINGS

Well the tooth is gone.  Our UK dentist is marvellous.  His name is Michael and he's a very grounded, no nonsense kind of person and after a degree of fairly dramatic pushing, shoving and waggling, which seemed to last for ages but was probably only a few seconds, the tooth was out.

"Eee I am good" he exclaimed as he waved it in front of me.  I was pleased about that, as it meant that it had come out in one piece without the need for any digging, which had been my worry.  "Little bugger!" I said, looking at the bloody molar. (Literally.)

"You can faint now!" he said, with a cheeky grin.  He explained that many people get so worked up about having a tooth out that they faint once it's all over.  I can understand that, it's a pretty brutal business.  That's when it occurred to me why there were two dental nurses in the room instead of the usual one.  The taller one was probably there to act as catcher.  

Luckily I'm not the fainting type.  Anyway, I had to stay vertical in order to drive home.  I was back home only half an hour after leaving for the appointment.  Marvellous.

He gave me a leaflet about aftercare and some instructions saying that the socket would heal perfectly well.  "Things go wrong when people mess with it" he said.

However, I did feel a bit fragile and needed some paracetamol once the local anaesthetic had worn off.  Sitting outside in the shade at teatime I was glad for a visit from our robin who kept me company.

When we first moved to our second French house, when it was mainly a second home, I took my vast collection of beads there.  They rarely got used because we were there in summer when there were other things to do.  So we moved them back to the UK where I would happily tinker away with them over the dull winter months.

Now of course we spend the winters in France and my beads are still in the UK.  Having lugged them across the Channel twice, there and back again, and with the complexities of Brexit, I don't feel inclined to take them to France again but I do miss them.  Feeling rather battered and bruised yesterday afternoon I decided it was a good time to tackle one of the sorting jobs that's been on my mind for ages.  When we are only in the UK for a short time I often do little repair and alteration jobs and it inevitably involves rummaging through boxes without the time to tidy things up afterwards.  Hence a box full of random bits and pieces that needed sorting.  I tipped them all out onto the dining table and sorted them.  It was very satisfying in a mindless way that took my mind off the morning's drama.

And so I have been able to do some alterations to a friend's earrings.  She has three pairs that were a gift from someone and she loves them but the ear hooks make her ears sore.  She obviously has an allergy to nickel or whatever metal they are made of.  My idea was to change the gold coloured mounts for sterling silver ear hooks in such a way as to create the same length of drop or dangle.  That way she can still wear them without getting sore ears.  Playing with my beads again has been great fun.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing it.