Buccal Up

As well as serving as a reminder that these spectacular collapses of Antarctic ice are telling us that Global Warming is real and species-threatening, a more personal and current metaphor for the phenomenon is that of my dental status. On Friday, while snacking on some roasted almonds, a seemingly gigantic piece of rear molar slid gracefully away from the rest of the tooth (the meso-lingual surface of tooth #19, to be precise). An emergency trip to the dentist today confirmed that a crown will be needed so in a couple of days I will be subjected to two hours of fun-filled numbness while the old stump is re-shaped and a temporary crown fitted. Apparently they have a large movie library for patient distraction purposes. I enquired whether they had Marathon Man (they didn't) -I wonder if they have Pulp Fiction or perhaps The Thomas Crown Affair...?