saying thank you is free!

My balcony overlooks a road junction where a side road joins my road. It's quite busy at rush hour, by the time they get to the junction, motorists have probably been waiting five or ten minutes in a queue. Some motorists will practically touch the car in front in their anxiety not to let anyone in - but many of them generously wave other motorists to go ahead in front of them. So my question is - How hard would it be to wave thank you?!!! I would estimate that only one in four does give a quick wave, and they don't appear to suffer any ill effects ...

falling asleep in the dentist's chair

The very first time I went to the dentist, when I was around 5, I think, I kicked him - Mr Hands - in the shins. He hurt me! He didn't have much time for what we would call nowadays 'customer service' or 'child-friendliness'.

I used to be very scared of the dentist, finding the whole thing a painful, stressful, ordeal. I would sometimes cry, and certainly be completely tense and afraid until he said those magic words 'you can rinse now'. One day, I got to thinking about whether I was really in pain or not, or if it was just discomfort and the anticipation of pain. Then it occurred to me that it's quite insulting to the dentist to make a tremendous fuss each time. Imagine if someone were wincing and whimpering every time you touched your keyboard as you wrote an email, or scrunched up their face every time you turned the steering wheel of your taxi. So I made up my mind to relax a little bit and trust him to do his job properly, and I told him that. 'Some people', he said 'are so relaxed they fall asleep while I am working on their teeth'.

He is a very, very good dentist. His name is Michael Thomas and his only fault is the poor quality of his jokes. He is kind, as is his assistant Lisa. Lisa has absolutely perfect teeth, and she puts her hand on my shoulder, or even pats my hand, when there's a particularly difficult bit. .

Today I went and had quite a big filling on my lower teeth. I concentrated on the music (it was Ella Fitzgerald) and before long, I really did begin to doze.

courtesy car

I have smashed the front of my Puma so it is in the garage, awaiting repair. ‘Ooh’, said Terry, sucking his teeth. ‘That will take a month. Maybe more!’

“How can it take a month?”, I ask, trying not to shriek. ‘Well’, he says, ‘first the assessor has to come. That could take a week. Then we have to order the parts…’ ‘It’s a Ford!’ ‘Yes, but they’re not in production anymore …’ Anyway, I can see he’s not open to pleading so we leave it that he will do all he can to get it back to me within a few weeks.

In the meantime, he lets me have a courtesy car. A Skoda Flavia. I ring Chris to tell him. ‘A Skoda?! That’s a discourtesy car!’ he says sympathetically.

Actually I quite like driving a Skoda. Notwithstanding that it has no acceleration at all. It makes you more courteous, knowing you’re going to lose any contest to get ahead of someone. And that it’s a Skoda says ‘I don’t care what you think of my car!’, which is comforting. On the A3, other cars feel compelled to ‘just get past’ me, pulling in front of me from the fast lane. I graciously let them.