The past few days have been dominated by health, yet again. Dot’s colonoscopy was on Tuesday at 5.30pm, but this affected the previous two days because of the restricted diet she was allowed. She also had to take the rather unpleasant drink that would empty her bowels. On Monday night this didn’t seem to have worked, which was quite worrying. In the end it turned out Dot had been sipping it instead of drinking it in glassfuls, and eventually it did work – only too well, as usual.

However, we didn’t get much sleep that night. This was also partly because I’d had my back tooth out, and my mouth was hurting much more than I thought it would – not where the tooth had been extracted, but just about everywhere else on that side. I’ve taken quite a lot of paracetamol / cocodamol, and it has quietened down, but I still feel very fuzzy, and the site of the extraction looks infected.

As a result I didn’t sleep very well last night. In an hour or so I am going up to the dentist to get it checked.* Meanwhile Dot had her colonoscopy, which was a bit of an ordeal, requiring two lots of sedation, but actually was very successful in that it was complete and revealed nothing untoward. I had a 2½-hour wait for her, which would have been fine if (a) I’d known it would have been that long and (b) I’d remembered to take a book. As it was I didn’t do much except think about my teeth.

Afterwards we went home and had a late meal, followed by a really good night’s sleep.

In the middle of all that I went to the monthly Archant coffee morning and explained that Dot really couldn’t come. Oh, no.

Yesterday we took some old clothes to the Break charity shop on Unthank Road and returned a boxful of recyclable material to Hello Fresh by leaving it at the Rosary Road shop to be picked up. Afterwards we went to Morrisons and bumped into a bronzed Carrie S and Matt collecting food for their food bank. Carrie has just returned from a painting holiday in Naples. My tooth was feeling dodgy but I decided against going up to the dentist’s – probably a mistake.

Last Sunday I preached and led the service, because Phil was taking his wife to see her mother. As Carrie and the Greens were away I also had to play guitar. At least Liz C was there to do the prayers. Afterwards the vicar popped in to do the annual DCC meeting. We had a quorum this time.

*Possible low-grade infection, possible normal healing process. I have antibiotics.