It really comes to something when the highlight of my week is a trip to the dentist! I’ve been going to the same dental practice in Worcester for over thirty years, ever since I was at school in the city. It’s not as convenient as having a dentist based in Malvern, but I know and trust them, and it’s not as if I have to go there all that often. One of the nice things about working part-time is that I can, to a large extent, arrange my working hours to suit myself, provided that customer meetings and deadlines are fully accommodated. So, since I had to be in Worcester late Monday morning for my dentist appointment, I decided to go a bit earlier, do a bit of shopping before getting my teeth looked at, and then treat myself to lunch afterwards, before returning to Malvern, logging on and getting on with my report writing.
I particularly wanted to go to Waterstones. My gran gave me a Waterstones book token for Christmas, but there isn’t a branch in Malvern, and the last few times I was somewhere with a branch, I stupidly didn’t have my book token with me. So it’s been burning a hole in my pocket for several months now. I spent a very pleasant half hour looking at books and choosing what to spend it on. I always enjoy buying books, and it’s even better when I’m effectively spending someone else’s money! In the end I went for the big, glossy British Museum catalogue of the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition which I went to a few months back. I had coveted the book at the time, but it was too heavy for me to carry home in my suitcase from London. It was still a bit of a drag hauling it around Worcester, especially as I walked from the city centre over the bridge to the dentist and back, but I’m very pleased with it. It’s not just a catalogue of the exhibits in the museum (with very good photos of them) but also a detailed and rather wide-ranging description of Roman life. I’m looking forward to reading it in depth.
After the dentist had given me the all-clear, I walked back into town and had an early lunch at Saffrons, a little bistro in one of the quieter streets in the city centre. I had the fixed-price lunch of sausage, mash, greens, and onion gravy followed by strawberry Eton mess. That was very pleasant, and set me up nicely for spending the afternoon working on my latest milestone.
