It's only money, Chapter 164

As I write, I'm gradually getting my face back after a lengthy session at the dentist's.  I complained bitterly about the crown concerned having lasted only 23 years, and at the absence of a trade-in value of the gold that he took out.  Fortunately, one's relationship with the dentist is jocular: he has been looking after my gob for over 25 years, after all.  I have another 45 minute session in a couple of weeks' time for the new bit of gold to be glued in.  Must say it irks me to part with a monthly £30 premium for dental treatment, and to have to pay for lab work (eg the new crown, @ c.£180) when I have heaved sacksful of money into the NHS through tax and national insurance contributions over the years.  But the reality is that it's now hard to get NHS dental treatment in these parts, and I think I pay less than my friends in Switzerland, for whom it's cheaper to hop on a plane to Budapest for dental work.  I suppose the premiums are an incentive to get regular examinations, scrapes and polishes.

The roads between here and the town I visited this morning are in a dreadful state.  Though we've had a pretty mild winter, the potholes are terrible, and these days you can spot the drunk drivers easily: they're the ones who drive in a straight line.   The rest of us are constantly taking evading action to avoid wrecking the suspension.  I suppose it would be kind to the suspension to get the car washed some time.  It is absolutely filthy, and a wash would return a few kilos of mud to the environment.  But it has rained pretty much every day since time immoral, so the temptation is to leave it until the weather improves.

Said rain has on occasions been very heavy and accompanied by very strong winds.  I won't grizzle further about the fence, but will just record that the bigger bird table, usually a model of stability, went over in the storms while we were away.  You can still see the boot prints in the quagmire (it may presently return to being the back lawn) from when I went out to right it.  The storms have also brought a lot of moss down from the roof, so I was up the ladder cleaning one of the accessible gutters this morning, and sweeping up the moss that had landed on the tarmac apron in front of the garages.  Exercise, I suppose, and it was worth the effort, I think: the gutters now transport the water to the down pipe, which is working.  Next task: remove the U-bend on the shower room basin and rod out the hair and shaving soap that are making it drain so slowly.  Ah the joys of home ownership. 

While in grizzle mode, I've raised with Hertz my moans about the car we had in Madeira.  That it was under-powered and over-geared was characteristic of the car - don't be tempted by the Golf 1.6 TDI.  That it was old, grubby and had worn out wipers and tyres was not clever: it used to be axiomatic that a Hertz rental would be a late-model vehicle in good nick.  Not so now, it seems.  Comments awaited.