A lovely dentist.

Today I visited my dentist. He is a very good dentist and very nice man.
I am a total coward. My first dentist was a drunken brute with huge fingers covered in course red hair. He injured my older sister so much she needed to go to hospital to get her gums stitched. I have pulled my own teeth to avoid a dentist. My previous dentist in London left a root canal tool (2cm metal spike) inside Herrad's molar- (discovered years later by our current dentist) and after she extracted one of mine a severed root emerged from my gum some two months later.
Our dentist is gentle, kind, and extremely good. When we first came back to him after London he referred Herrad to the professor at the dental school for a second opinion (more damage form London). The professor made it very clear that Sietsa was one of his best pupils and a top practitioner. I guess he could make a fortune but not only does he base his practice in the inner city he also spends about half the year working in Malawi with aids orphans. I trust him to be sober and to care if he hurts me!
So it was and a cavity was filled with the minimum of discomfort.The worst he does is sing along to the radio.
He is very fond of Herrad and asked after her and was keen to get a link to her blog. His assistant is a really nice woman as well. Apart from emergency butchery in London Herrad has been his patient for about 25 years- he was a young thing just out of school when she first went to him and evidently he was known then as the dish with a drill. He is still not bad- if a little balder.
Funny I kind of enjoy going to my dentists!

Tolstoy is the geezer!

I see many people use quotes on sites and blogs. Usually they are there to inspire. Some are a nice phrase often of a cynical nature that express the essence of the content.
I looked for a source of quotes for my self, favourite author... one of many and maybe the most pretentious to quote: Leo Tolstoy.
I like the man and love his writing. His political/social commentary is more relevant than ever. So I am looking for a Tolstoy quote to sum up the blog.
Some nominations:
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
Leo Tolstoy

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Leo Tolstoy

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Leo Tolstoy

And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.
Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy

Boredom: the desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.
Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Leo Tolstoy

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
Leo Tolstoy

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Leo Tolstoy

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Leo Tolstoy

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
Leo Tolstoy

If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy


It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy


Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
Leo Tolstoy

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.
Leo Tolstoy

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
Leo Tolstoy

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
Leo Tolstoy

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Leo Tolstoy

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
Leo Tolstoy

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Leo Tolstoy

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
Leo Tolstoy

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.
Leo Tolstoy

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
Leo Tolstoy

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
Leo Tolstoy

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.
Leo Tolstoy

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

I like old Leo!

Cockney Golden Girls

Sorry Steve Johnny Speight did it first

My people!

Leave it out!

Words are fun!

Rhyming slang started with the street traders in the 19C. The traders (costamongers) would go to the market or even go out of London to growers to buy and sell fresh fruit and veg off a donkey cart. They were an urban peasantry who did not fit into the new industrial society. The newly founded police force was given the task of placing them under control. (Weights and measures, controlling pitches, banning traditional fares, banning street games, they even had the right to inspect homes for cleanliness.)Huge street battles were fought until the police got the upper hand. Suddenly the coppers were watching what ever they were doing so the use of Romany, Cant, back slang, and rhyming slang became methods of concealing what you were talking about. Some of the early use has become "legitimate". A "Mickey Finn" comes from the instruction to put a strong laxative into a police agents beer- Mix one in- Mickey Finn. Today in parliament the aristocratic Eton and Oxford educated David Cameron (leader of the Conservative Party) talked about the Prime Minister "loosing his bottle"
Bottle and Glass- ass. A native user like me would seldom use bottle. I would string it through a bit. April- April in Paris. Paris rhymes with Aris -Aristotle. Aristotle- bottle. Bottle and glass- ass.
New ones are made up all the time- "Who is getting the Britneys in?" (Britney Spears- Beers)
Historical ones like Tom Micks- six. Or Lillian Gish- fish are from the silent film era.
My favourite is Jerusalem for donkey. Jerusalem artichoke to rhyme with the Romany word for donkey; moke.
Back slang is still in the language ;Yob (boy backwards).
A gay language also evolved amongst male prostitutes and with theatricals. I did know some lovely old queens who spoke it quite fluently. I can remember some phrases "Dolly to vader your bona eek" Lovely to see you beautiful face. I believe it is fashionable again in high camp circles in London. Bona.
For some real fun catch this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ak5vYS0tvg

Sad

Sad... even America only guarantees the right to pursue happiness. Civilization gives us a false sense of mastery over our environment when in reality we are only elements within it. The forces that control the wider system will continue to operate what ever edifices we construct to resist them . We have to adapt to the environment or we fail to survive. I have adapted to include MS in my environment. How I make a living, where I live, expectations all changed to accommodate the new uncontrollable factor. I have adapted to change and loss so as I can continue with my life and take on the new task of caregiver. I have changed my expectations for the rest of my life. What I can not see is how I adapt to not having Herrad. I can not see how my life works without her. I do not want to decline into lonely old age and increased madness. I do not want to work for some jerk again after this experience. Fuck the future. I don't want it.