Overweening Ambition

George & the Dragon (oil on canvas, 16 x 20 ins)

Things have gone well today. The new 3 x 4 painting has moved along remarkably well, thanks in part to a return to Spectragel, the fast-drying impasto additive. Inevitably, of course, the figure - undoubtedly the most successful part of the painting so far - has turned out to be too small. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet, wipe her out and redo her. Bollocks.

Mo came round today with her digital camera and took a photograph of what will probably be my image on the publicity. I'm happy enough with it. That's it above.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is shaping up to be a total loss as far as painting is concerned. I managed to get an appointment with a doctor of uncertain pedigree at 9.10 tomorrow morning.

That'll be a laugh. Me getting up in time to make an appointment at 9.10!

Then I simply gotta see my mum. She'll be running out of ciggies.

And to round the day off, a much-postponed visit to the dentist for at least two fillings. Oh joy.

I can see I'm unlikely to get all the paintings done I'd hoped to, unless I really knock myself out. Ambition will be the death of me yet.

Who ate all the pies?

By the time I came out of the dentist's, I was really hungry. I'd deliberately not eaten before going and the Nurse Counsellor hadn't helped by rattling on about how much she'd just enjoyed her ham sandwich for lunch. So imagine my delight when I got on the Metro and found myself opposite a man with a big bag marked Greggs. He proceeded to wolf down a huge pasty, crumbs falling all over the place. Then out came a French bread pizza. More crumbs. More gusto. Then another French bread pizza. There was no slackening of pace, no thoughts of "Isn't this enough?" crossed his face. Only more crumbs. At last he finished the second pizza....only to pull out a Kingsize Chunky Kit Kat and ram it in in huge pieces. No, no, I thought there can't be anything left in the bag. But there was: a double Twix.

Far from feeling hungry, by now I was mostly nauseous. And the bloke was such a skinny little dude. Where did it all go? Maybe to feed a colossal intellect? In a mood of crumb-bedecked contentment, he pulled out the last thing in his bag. It was a pristine pad of Basildon Bond notepaper. For the rest of the journey he sat and read, with evident interest, the front cover of his notepaper.

Gobshite

"Take a seat and I'll be back in a moment to show you round your mouth." So said the qualified Nurse Counsellor when I arrived at the dentists today. Apparently, at the behest of the NHS, dentists are to allow longer intervals between check-ups but provide more in-depth examinations and advice to encourage us to take better care of our teeth. This was the first of my 30 minute Dental Health Assessments, during which I was given a guided tour of my mouth with the aid of a little tv camera, shown how to operate a manual toothbrush and had my teeth and gums poked and pricked. I'd be the first to admit that the inside of my mouth is not my best feature and it wouldn't be the part of me I'd want to appear on television. But there it was on a little monitor, all resplendent in glittering metal and spit. Needless to say, this session cost me more than my previous check-ups, but having now seen an example of what my dentist has to look at every day of his working life, I'm almost inclined to say he earns his money.

For an additional fee - totally optional but recommended - my kindly Nurse Counsellor took a sample of my plaque and put it under a microscope linked to the monitor. Bloody hell! It looked like the compost bin at the bottom of the garden when I first take off the lid! Lots of little wriggling and squirming things which she told me were spirochetes and bummeroids or somesuch, all intent on causing gum disease. The thing about modern medicine is that it has all the tools now to really scare the shit out of you. So it's hardly surprising that she was then easily able to sell me some cute little interdental brushes and a bottle of mouthwash to destroy the wrigglers, though the fact that the mouthwash is composed of hydrogen peroxide leads me to think they'll just become blonde and too stupid to do their thing.