A man walks into a dentist’s surgery...

Sound like the beginning of a joke? Well, it's no laughing matter.

But before that, the wife and I went for some lunch. As you might know, I like a decent burger now and then. And when I'm in central London, I like to indulge my palate with a visit to Hamburger Union. There are several branches, but yesterday we went to the one on Tottenham Court Road. But once we placed our order and took our seats, we remembered that the last time we went there we ended up feeling a little sad.

You see, right above the table that we have taken on both visits there is a print on the wall. A quick glance reveals that it's a picture of Noah's Ark, braving huge crashing waves. However, and grab a Kleenex now, on closer inspection you can see that the ark, which is full to capacity, has had to tow a smaller boat behind it, and upon this secondary vessel stands a pair of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are also wearing inflatable rubber rings around their long necks.

I mean, how sad is that?

Well, after the yummy burger I could delay the inevitable no longer. First the hygienist. Apart from the fact that I have T-shirts older than the woman who was let loose inside my mouth with sharp and dangerous tools, this part of the visit went okay-ish. Nothing I didn't already know.

The dentist proper was a different story. Man, how I hate those initial anaesthetizing jabs. The needle is about 3ft long and she sticks it in, pulls it halfway back out then pushes it back in at an adjusted angle. And after that one she does the same with another needle. Like, ow.

Then she got me all prepped, with the green rubber sheet with a hole in it to isolate the tooth that is to be worked on. Once the area seemed numb enough, on with the drilling. To be honest, I don't have a major problem with this part of the process. So long as I'm suitably anaesthetized, it's all good. For me, it's the fact that I have to lie there with my mouth fairly wide open for an hour. That's hard work.

So, drill and file and dig and file and drill ad infinitum. All the fun of the fair, it was. And drill and file and dig and file and drill some more. And we're done. Then the not-great news. She wasn't able to finish it, but that had been half-expected anyway. The worse news? Because one of the canals goes off at a funny angle, she can't get all the way down it. Options: live with it and see how it goes; or go to a specialist who SHOULD be able to get to it.

Now, the specialist will charge around £800 ($1,600) for this treatment. And given that I'm already paying the best part of £500 ($1,000) for the work my dentist is doing on it, I'm sure as hell not going to pay yet more for someone else to maybe not be able to finish it. To be honest, I wish I'd had all the facts at the outset, though I appreciate she may not have known how tough the canal would have been to get down. It's a curved one, apparently. But armed with all this info and a list of costings, I might have simply decided to remove the offending article. "If thy [tooth] offends thee, pluck it out" kind of thing.

Oh well.

So I go back for the second phase of the job on Monday the 19th. Looking forward to reliving the whole thing again, obviously.

Well, that's all for today. Over and out, amigos.