Rant

This evening on television I saw Rick Stein bewailing the end of the swordfish catches in the fishing ports of North Africa. We saw the carcases of huge fish, with their huge dead eyes, worth perhaps £1,000 each to the fishermen, stacked up ready for freighting out to the restaurants of Europe. Stein said how worried he is by the imminent decline of these marvellous fish, which are so tasty. His whole premise is to look for edible fish in the Mediterranean.

Five minutes later, in a programme about early (1920s) film footage shot in North Africa, we saw clips of young prostitutes in the same North African towns and ports. Wobbling their tiny breasts in the air and grinning, these girls (presumably long dead now) pranced and plied their rotten stinking trade, hoping to earn enough to keep body and soul together in a corrupted society, where females were and are trash, and capital destroys lives.

It was hard not to draw parallels between the doomed and beautiful swordfish and the doomed and crazy young women on the dockside of Tangier. Both were hopelessly netted and had no chance. Stein warbled on about the hearty meals of fishermen the world over. He didn't mention the price, or the smells down there on the dockside.

Dreams

I am walking up Hampstead High Street, where I grew up - at least, I walked along there to school every day. The whole arena is changed. The streetscape which used to house Rowland Hill, the William IV, the Coffee Cup, Knowles the jewellers, Mr Mitchell's Junk Shop, Woolworth, Gages Haberdashers - all that grand area has been widened and transformed into a new display space. A series of monuments is laid out in an elliptical pattern. Each holds a beautiful, delicate ceramic sculpture representing the dead. Ladies in elaborate crinolines lie recumbent, with lace or collars in fine porcelain. Everything is delicately painted. There are huge model moths, and birds. Music is carved out in dully gold and amber shapes. Pulsating hollow or translucent panels seem to sing. Troubadours are trapped in white glass boxes, their masks are weeping.

Toothache

Pain is an odd thing - I experience it spatially, and in colour. In the last few days I had sudden toothache in many teeth at once, including one which is an artificial crown - so this was referred pain, I presume.

Now it has subsided to one smaller area of my gum. If I had any money I could go to a dentist of my choice. Since I'm pretty well broke at the moment I have to scrabble round for a so-called 'National Health' dentist, or wait for the pain to go away.

I think this is not a tooth problem really, but soft tissue. For years, dentists told me there was nothing that could be done about gingivitis, so I watched my gums shrink back slowly and my teeth appear to lengthen.

This all makes me feel angry - since I brush my teeth twice or thrice a day, went regularly for checkups when dentists were available, taught my children to take care of their teeth. But now these problems arise and for me, at the moment, there is no help, unless I drive many miles and enrol with a clinic still condescending to see non-private patients, and then endure the rude and money-driven practices they have to use: hot-seating for instance. This is when they bring you in to the ghastly chair, put on gloves (new ones, we hope), examine you, suggest X-rays or other treatment, even get as far as giving you that anaesthetic - and then bundle you out into the waiting room while they look at someone else. You sit and wait for the dope to take effect and wonder how long your rival for the dentist's attention will be. Will the drug have worn off by the time you get in there again?

Then the other person comes out, and you get bundled back in for a rapid, indecently rapid treatment. No time for discussion, or asking if you want to go ahead, or explaining what your options might be. Having mercury amalgam inserted into my mouth is not a pleaseant thing. But it's not discussed. I know at least one dental nurse with MS, and a doctor who is convinced that MS = mercury poisoning. No doubt someone somewhere is charting it all. And oddly, I remember also playing with live mercury at school, rolling it in our hands. Quicksilver, it was called then. Magic - but no-one knew how deadly it was.

Knowledge of these things changes, and so does the pattern of power and money and professional practice. But toothache stays more or less the same.

Winter draws on, ha ha ha.

Maggie came for supper. We cooked for her: a tomato tart Tatin, and as a starter, socca which came out very well once we had cooked it on a stiff cast iron dish.

Then we watched the Antiques Roadshow (which Clive said he would ban if ever he became king. Too many trade secrets given away, but it's far too late now, of course).

Outside it's too dark and cold. The clocks switched back to GMT last night.