My son in law broke a tooth recently and put off having it treated because he wasn’t registered with a dentist. When it began to hurt, presumably because untreated it just deteriorated further, he finally hunted around an managed to find a dental surgery prepared.. take him on as a patient. He was lucky, even though he did end up having the tooth extracted.
Incidentally, according to Granddaughter Number Two, he made a great deal of fuss about the pain - the after-extraction pain. Faced with her lack of sympathy, he declared that she did not know what it felt like to have a tooth extracted. He was talking to the wrong person; she had several teeth extracted prior having a brace fitted to straighten her smile and yes, she does know what it is like!
Anyway, he was lucky to find a dentist. It’s a bit like looking for hens’ teeth! In Bristol yesterday hundreds queued up to register with a dental surgery which was reopening. The British are famous for our ability to queue in a polite and orderly fashion, but this queue apparently needed police presence to keep it in order. There were desperate people who had not seen a dentist for 5 years, parents who had not been able to register their children. A sorry state of affairs! And Bristol isn’t alone.
So now the government is putting a plan together to remedy the situation:
“The government accidentally sent details of the scheme to all MPs on Tuesday afternoon, which included the plan to offer NHS dentists cash incentives to take on extra patients and a new scheme to send dental teams to schools and nurseries to tackle tooth decay.
Sunak was praised for offering parents and parents-to-be advice on how to take care of babies’ gums and milk teeth as part of the Smile for Life programme. Dental vans will be deployed in rural and coastal areas to reach the most isolated communities.”
It was supposed to be raised first of all in Parliament and discussed but, oops, details were sent out early! The internet, including email, is a very fickle friend and sometimes things are sent out sooner than intended or, much worse, to the wrong people! Anyway, this has sparked something of a “Dentists - whose idea is it anyway?” competition between Labour and the Tories. Oh dear!
Oddly enough, I remember being in primary school where we had regular visits to the Medical Room to be measured and to have our eyes tested and our teeth checked. Children with problems were referred to their GP. (Another regular visitor was Nitty Nora, the Bug Explorer, who went through our hair looking for headlice - ah! the relief of not being singled out as lousy!) Such things have disappeared. Now schools are built without Medical Rooms and in older building those rooms have been given a new purpose. But where do they put the child who feels sick and needs to be kept in isolation until hometime?
There’s a new vogue word going around: niksen. Apparently this is the Dutch term for doing absolutely nothing. One of the ills of modern life, it seems, is that we don’t do enough niksen. We are always rushing around convincing people that we are really busy and, in some cases, really earning huge salaries. Books have been written about it, there are classes where you can learn how to do nothing (and incidentally make someone else quite wealthy).
So now we have hygge (the Danish art of cosiness) and fika (the Swedish art of the coffee break) and, because things have a tendency to come in three, finally niksen (the Dutch art of doing nothing).
Well, that’s modern living categorised and organised for us!
Oh, and snow is forecast for tomorrow. That should be interesting!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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