The adventure continues

To Bridgwater town centre, far too early for civilised folk, to drop Graham off at the local hospital to have a consultant examine and diagnose his wisdom teeth problem.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said. “It’s only an inspection. Go and get yourself a coffee and croissant in Costa Coffee and I’ll walk down to join you when I finish.”

“You will call me, though, when you’re finished, won’t you?”

“Of course. You seem to be more worried about it than I am.”

“Well, yes. Wisdom teeth can be proper little devils if they’re not looked after.”

Off I went, to park the car and walk over to Costa Coffee. A word to the wise for visitors to Bridgwater. You will probably park in the Shopper’s Car Park, where you park on an upper deck and take one of those glazed lifts [elevators] to the lower level. Beware. These lifts are not ventilated. If someone has farted recently in there, you’ll know about it. Such was my good fortune today. Hey ho. At least it’s a no-smoking area. If there’s anything quite so revolting as mixed farts and stale cigarette smoke I don’t care to think about it.

So, anyway, I walked out of the shopping mall, across the high street, and down to W.H. Smith where I bought myself a copy of The Guardian, and then into the coffee shop for a croissant and a large cappuchino (sans chocolate) in which to dunk it. I was of course prepared to wait as long as it took but I wasn’t too far into my newspaper, and not entirely through my cappuchino when my phone rang.

“I’m on my way.”

“Great. How did it go?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

Sitting together, Graham relishing his croissant and large latte and me sipping at a scalding espresso, I got the news. He has a real, hospital-type problem with his wisdom teeth, and there’s a hidden cyst that’s pressing on the main nerve to his jaw. He’ll have to go into hospital to have it sorted under general anaesthetic, sometime in the next three months.

“Oh, you poor love,” I said. “Still, at least you’ll be taken care of properly, and under the NHS, too, so you’ll be alright.”

“Yes, I know. Even so.”

“Yeah. I know. What we were dreading. And I’ll bet good money that it’s hurting now.”

“Pschysomatic, that is.”

I am so grateful that we are reconnected to good, high quality NHS dentistry once more. This ought to have been diagnosed and fixed back in Lincolnshire but there you go. I’m dreading his stay in hospital, ‘at least overnight’ though I’m sure he’ll be fine. Except… Those demons of the darkness do like to taunt us, don’t they.

The sun had been shining up until then, though it had been chilly in the wind. By the time we’d finished the sun had gone, the sky was clouding over, and the wind was getting to the nasty side of chill. I’d resolved to take a short video of the Admiral Blake statue in the town centre, though, and so we paused outside long enough for me to do so. The wind whistled as I moved the video camera over the scene and I soon came to realise that this was not to be an inspiring shot so I ended it and resolved to do the thing over when the weather is kinder.

Admiral Blake? Late sixteenth century naval man, quite heroic, too late to fight the Spaniards and Dutch, and too early to fight the French, but brave and seamanlike for all that. Bridgwater born and bred, that much I know, but I’ll need to visit the museum to find out more about him.

I’m still mulling over the way I want to use the video camera, and to present it on the web. There are several conflicts on this one. I feel a need to move ahead with the technology, even though my video camera is not of the greatest quality and translation to the web renders it even less so. Moving pictures, no matter what the quality, have a vitality that’s entirely missing in stills. I’m well aware that some web users, and readers of my journal, do not yet have the technology to view video shots; I feel the need to cater for them as well as the majority who do. Difficult.

I had thought of adding a ‘video blog’ to the online journal when I first considered video. That might happen, but not yet.

For now, I’ll continue playing with my new toy and see where it takes me. I’m going through a transitional phase anyway, and playing games with video is helping me enormously. The words or, rather, the poetry, deserted me when I had my bronchial nasty a few weeks back, taking a degree of my certainty of purpose with them. If they come back, well and good, I shall ride off with them. If not, becoming a videographer of the commonplace is no bad fate.

Let’s see how it all goes. The adventure continues, and I’m grateful for it.

Bridgwater on a chilly, windy day