Germany calling

A visit to the dentist, more news on the pub — and an unexpected sequel...

Feast of the Bean King, Jacob Jordaens — in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Mood this week and actual photo of future party at the pub.

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I got an unexpected email the other day.

It reminded me that deliverance arrives in unexpected ways, at unexpected times.

Let me explain.

Earlier this week, deliverance came at the dentist’s. About three months ago, I went for a long overdue check-up and the dentist did an X-ray.

“Oh, you have a cavity. You’ll need a filling.”

I was surprised. I’d made it to the ripe old age of 38 without ever once having my teeth drilled. This was my first ever cavity.

“Are you sure?” I was dismayed.

“Yes.” She pointed to a dark patch on one of my premolars. “Right there.”

She booked me in for a filling a week later. I went home and flossed, in that totally pointless way we all do after a dentist visit — and a large piece of something green came out of the gap where she said I had a hole.

I went downstairs, brandishing my tooth-gunk, and told Joel.

“So?”

“So, I don’t think it was a cavity. I think it was just some crap stuck in my teeth.”

“So...?”

“She’s booked me in for a filling next week. I’ve never had a filling before. I’m scared.”

“Tell her. Tell her you went home and flossed and there was something there and it might have been what she saw on the X ray.”

So, when I went back for my filling, I told her. She was sceptical as fuck.

We looked at the X ray together. There was definitely a dark patch.

I pleaded my case. Was she sure it was a cavity? Like, absolutely sure? Could it be the food? Just, because, you know, my teeth have always been pretty good…

Even I was rolling eyes listening to myself. She must hear this all the time. You can’t negotiate with dental decay, I could hear her thinking.

But, it was 7pm on a weekday. She looked at her watch.

“Ok, if you’re reluctant, let’s just monitor it. We’ll book you in for a check-up in three months and see if the hole’s got any bigger.”

Cut to my three-month check-up yesterday. Another X-ray, a different dentist, I braced for the bad news.

I’m sure you saw this coming. THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.

Nothing. Not a whisper of a thing. My teeth are fine.

She was going to drill my perfectly healthy tooth.

Now, I’m not really sure what the moral of this story is. Don’t trust medical professionals? Go with your gut over years of scientific training?

These are not usually messages that resonate with me nor ones I would seek to pass on.

But still. I don’t know what else to say. She would have drilled my perfectly healthy tooth — if I hadn’t questioned it.

So, maybe, what I mean is: try? Don’t just mindlessly give up. Keep your brain at least partly engaged and query things? It’s always worth a try.

I said that last week about the pub too, didn’t I. Undone by our failure to get the grant, awash in woe that threatened to lacerate me at the ankles and sweep me, bleeding from leg stumps, off my feet.

I tried to console myself that it was still worth trying. Hey, I told myself, at least I got some decent newsletters out of it.

Well, this week we had a meeting. A meeting about the pub. Hope, it turns out, has not fled. The meeting was very positive. We are, it turns out, not the only ones who want to save the pub.

Just the lesson I needed in hope.

I’ll say nowt more in case it all comes to…. well, nowt. But maybe I’ll have some good news to share about the pub soon.

I know I keep saying it but, this time, for real: watch this space.

So, good things come in triplicate, right? Deliverance from the dentist’s drill, the whisper of possible deliverance for the pub — and what’s the third?

Back to that email.

It was the kind of email that usually I wouldn’t even open. The sender was “noreply” and it was addressed “Dear Ms/Mr”. Not promising.

But the first line…

I screamed for Joel and called the number, quickly.

“Fundbüro, Wuppertal.”

“Do you speak English?”

“A little bit, yes.” In perfect English.

“I just got your email. I think you have something of mine.”

This is what the email said:

MY SUITCASE!!!! Remember?!

An incredibly efficient telephone conversation there followed, with a kind man in Nord Rhine Westphalia. He named books in my suitcase: books I assumed I’d never see again. I said yes, yes, they’re mine.

There were a few tears (mine, not his).

The upshot was the promise of a registered delivery to my home address. It cost 58 Euros.

“He is heavy,” said my new friend in Wuppertal.

I hung up the phone and turned wordlessly to Joel. He hugged me. I cried a little more.

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

I wiped my nose. “I get my notebook back with all my drawings! My books! And that damn ski jacket I already replaced..”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “It means he probably saw your dildo.”

So, two months after losing it off a train somewhere in the vast, unknown workings of the German rail network, my suitcase is rolling its way back into my life from who-the-fuck-knows-Wuppertal.

It hasn’t arrived yet — so there’s no knowing what’s still in it — but I’ll keep you posted.

Frankly, as long as the dildo is still there, Wuppertal can keep the rest.