I blogged this from the phone, but for some reason browsers don't like it and eventually the photos go away. A mystery. So I sent the photo to flickr and linked back to here.
Anyway, the walk at Blackness was a nice interlude in an otherwise fraught day.
First off, I broke a tooth. And this is complicated because my dentist "sacked" me a few years ago when he went private. I should have gone straight to a local dentist and signed up to a dental plan. But of course I didn't. I have an absolute horror of dentistry, having had awful experiences as a child at the hands of school dental nurses with slow drills and quick tempers.
But now I have to have a dentist. And because my work situation's a bit wonky and because I already pay National Insurance, preferably an NHS dentist. But dentists who are taking NHS patients are rare beasts. I turned to the NHS itself for help. The website ("NHS Lothian at your service") had a couple of numbers to ring to locate your nearest NHS dentists.
The result was the same at both numbers: it rang a few times, a recorded voice said "goodbye" and the line went dead.
So I got to work compiling lists of dentists and phoning them, starting from the one up the road and working my way out. Very cunning, those dentists. It turns out you have to have a "clean bill of dental health" before you get on a plan, ie you have to have all your teeth fixed before they'll afford you the privilege of paying up to £40 a month for any subsequent dental treatment. And the prices!! £75 just for an initial examination, without any treatment.
I phoned and phoned and phoned, getting more and more despondent as the apparent cost of fixing my tooth mounted. Finally, a cheery receptionist said, "Yes we take NHS patients." I almost fainted. The appointment's not until next month, mind you, and it is 15 miles away. But still!
I could have annoyed myself still further by doing what was on my schedule before the tooth broke: giving Bertie his weekly treatment shampoo. But I think that would have broken me. So instead we went for a nice walk at Blackness. Because it was such a nice walk, with lots of friendly dogs and walkers for Bertie to schmooze, I took longer than intended and had to race around when I got home, getting ready for work.
I needn't have bothered: there was a whole new set of roadworks in place on a major road on my route, the traffic was crawling along. This is for new gas mains, same as the roadworks that have closed off the street I work in, which means I have to do a big complicated circuit around streets choked by roadworks for the trams - and by traffic that's doing a big complicated circuit around my work street and a couple of other major thoroughfares closed by tram works. There are also various random roadworks - for example there's one little side street that's crucial to my circuit that is sometimes blocked off because of building construction work.
What with all the hurtling around earlier, I didn't prepare anything for my dinner - I like to take a salad box or sandwich or something, because the canteen food is really pretty dire. Tonight's offering was big dish of mince with a pastry top, simmering in half an inch of fat - served with chips, of course. Ick. But it seems I won't have the chance to turn up my nose much longer: the canteen staff were told today that from March it's closing at 2:30pm. Not only that, they're all being sacked and will have to reapply for a much smaller number of jobs - 13 staff, 4 jobs.
And then tonight was hard, hard work, from go to whoa. I'm on my own tomorrow as well, so it will be even harder work.
However. The moral of my day is, no matter how annoying it was, at least I'm not having to compete against my workmates for a new job (yet). And at least I didn't have to slosh around in the Hudson River after my plane crashed.
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