Ron Bites his Tongue

One of the pleasures of retirement!

Elaine and I took a couple of days off last week and went up to Yorkshire. We stayed at one of the loveliest B&Bs we've ever come across in England - all elegance and comfort http://www.sunnybankguesthouse.co.uk/ . It was a novel luxury to be able to shoot off mid working-week and enjoy time away without feelings of guilt about missing work, playing hooky or having to be elsewhere. We'd gone specifically to visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park www.ysp.co.uk in the grounds of Bretton Hall which is now part of the University of Leeds. It's a magnificent setting with glorious views over the Yorkshire countryside and the landscaped grounds which include a huge lake in the bottom of the valley. It could easily take several hours to walk round the whole estate but our intention was to visit a specific exhibition of new works by Andy Goldsworthy
http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=andy+goldsworthy+art&ndsp=20&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-05,GGLD:en&start=0&sa=N
He is an 'environmental artist' who works with natural 'found' materials like leaves, twigs, thorns, stones, logs, mud, snow and so on. His works are often ephemeral, sometimes lasting only until the next tide, rainfall or strong wind before disappearing without leaving a trace - apart from photographs.

Surprisingly, when we arrived we ran into a wide selection of school parties. There were nippers who could not have been more than six or seven and students who were well beyond school leaving age and all sorts in between. It was really hard not being a teacher! There was a temptation to step in and ask to see what work they were doing or enquire as to what they thought of what they were seeing. It was easy to pick out those who needed special attention. It was clear that some students were fascinated in the art works whereas others were simply fascinated by each other and a few merely fascinated in themselves. Some were producing interesting artwork or poetry, others showed no interest. Generally their behaviour was fine, few were willing to acknowledge the presence of other visitors (like us), but we heard no rudeness or defiance - kids do seem better out of school but perhaps they were hand-picked. We bit our tongues, left them to their teachers and helpers but found the enthusiasm of the nippers and the 'coolness' of the students amusing and attractive.

That night we went out to eat. I'd been on solid food for a short time so I thought I'd treat myself - I went for a rib-eye steak which the landlord assured me would be soft and tender. It was and cutting it up to small enough lumps was fine. I could get pieces into my mouth easily enough and position them so I could chew. What a treat! The steak was beautiful and eating it felt like another step back towards normality. Admittedly I was rather slow, I couldn't shovel the food in but I was eating steak and enjoying it. The greatest difficulty was manoeuvring food around inside my mouth. We all do it all the time when we are eating. We use our tongue and to a lesser extent lips and cheeks, to make sure we have chewed sufficiently and that no food is left stuck in less accessible parts of the mouth. For me this was really hard and sometimes I had to resort to using my little finger. We also naturally co-ordinate these movements with our chewing and it is surprising how sophisticated this co-ordination is - done with never a thought.

Unfortunately this is no longer working for me although all of me thinks it should be. The result was that in the middle of auto-pilot chewing of my steak I suddenly found that I was eating my own tongue! Manoeuvring food (or trying to) had put my tongue in a new place and when I chewed ... whack. Of course I stopped chewing before doing any serious damage but three or four bites, always in the same place on the tongue meant that it swelled up and is was likely to get chewed again - what a pain! I'll find a work around for this in time even if it means having another tooth or two extracted - not a pleasant prospect but better than wrecking my tongue. This will have to be done before being zapped by the Dalek as after being zapped wounds heal only very slowly so extractions will be out of the question. And this gives me a very short deadline as the Dalek has decided now when he wants to see me. More about this next time.