This is a slightly unusual journal entry in that I began composing it at 2350 hours on the evening of Tuesday 30th June, having been awoken by a violent tooth-ache.

This is not quite so mind-boggling & exciting a development as it might at first seem at face value, for I had retired to bed with a similar affliction only two hours before. I’ve had it since the end of last week and am controlling the pain with Paracetamol tablets.

I’m not going to bore you or myself with a history of my teeth & relationships with dentists – the latter, for the most part, cordial & relaxed as it happens – or indeed expand upon the reasons why I never go for check-ups … probably attributable to my general attitude to Life that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

As a boy I loved rough & tumbles, indeed all sports involving physical contact (including boxing) – this was of course in the days before protective mouth-guards were generally available. It culminated at the age of twelve, when I moved from being attached to my mother’s old dentist in Felpham in Sussex to a practice in Redhill (Surrey), with the new dentist – upon his first cursory examination – commenting “You’re a fighter, aren’t you?” as he surveyed my array of chipped and broken teeth. When he later broached the subject of sorting them out, my father responded “I don’t think there’s much point, do you? … The way he carries on, they’d only get smashed again.”

The thought that occurs this morning – as I eagerly look forward to my 1140 hours appointment with the nearest dentist to my abode – is about how we take our normal good health for granted.

Human beings always get used to what they get used to … be it luxury or deprivation, hard work or sloth, pain or no pain. I absolutely hate getting tooth-ache, but since adulthood I’ve only had rare periods when I’ve gone for regular dental check-ups designed to prevent it and hopefully retain a set of a healthy, vibrant teeth. I recall one dentist I went to telling me that so far – via evolution – human teeth have only ever been designed to last forty-five years. Since until about the Middle Ages average life expectancy was only about thirty, this wasn’t a particular problem for the Average Joe.

It’s not just teeth. A while back the bread knife slipped as I was cutting some bread and I sliced into a finger tip … I cannot now identify which one. But I’ll tell you something. For about a week afterwards – something I hadn’t done for about forty years – I really appreciated how often I used said digit in my everyday existence … I was constantly catching it on paper edges, the rubbish bin, the lenses of my dark glasses, the gear stick in my car … just about everything & anything.

Sometimes episodes such as this are valuable – they bring you down to earth. Be we ever so gifted or else dumb, grand and high & mighty … or alternatively low and down & out … the fact is we all go to the toilet and we all end up six foot under, or else incinerated. The thought doesn’t depress me … it gives me comfort, frankly.