Disappearing glossy mags and a mysterious throbbing face

By roddy phillips

Published:

I’VE always regarded any time spent in a waiting room as an official skive from reality. Doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms are the best because, more often than not, they bring you into contact with people who are potentially worse off than yourself. A sort of drowsy peace reigns among the well-thumbed magazines and the largely ignored leaflets.

The only annoyance for all concerned, including the receptionist, used to be the constant phone calls from patients eager to book their seat in the waiting room, but even that’s been silenced, creating the atmosphere of a library with a bubbling undercurrent of contained anxiety.

I like to give something back to the experience, so normally I bring in a copy of the National Geographic and add it to the piles of Tractor Tyre Monthly and gossipy celeb mags.

The waiting room is the ideal place to catch up with modern culture, particularly since it’s free. Although it is curious to think there was a time when an article about Jordan might have featured the ancient city of Petra, named as one of the new seven wonders of the world.

For the past month, I’ve had a mysterious toothache on the go, so I’ve learned a lot about the female deity formally known as Jordan and another easy-on-the-eye popular goddess called Cheryl Cole. It’s fascinating stuff and you can see why no one reads the diabetes leaflets.

If there was a mysterious toothache leaflet, however, I might have been tempted. A grumpy upper-right molar seems to be the culprit, but as the pain moves around it would take the mind of Agatha Christie to work out what is happening.

Not that I don’t like a good mystery; I’m just not keen on the face-ache part, particularly as it’s restless and likes to roam from tooth to tooth. Apparently, this is what’s called referred pain.

When the dentist first explained it to me, I thought she said preferred pain and I said I would prefer none, but she said it wasn’t quite that simple. My sinuses fell under suspicion and since they get blamed for most things I was happy to give them a go.

I did, however, have an alternative theory, which was probably too alternative, but it certainly made the dentist laugh and I reckoned it was definitely worth looking into. Over the weeks, I’d noticed that the toothache turned up when I wore bright shirts and went away when I wore neutral-coloured shirts. So I tested it by wearing a vivid pink shirt for a morning and by lunchtime my face was throbbing.

“Slightly mediaeval, perhaps,” observed my wife, “I wonder how it would work if it was pitch dark and you didn’t know what colour of shirt you were wearing?”

I hadn’t thought of this and was intrigued.

“Do you think it’s worth trying?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” replied my wife, nodding sagely. “While you’re at it, you might try burying that pink shirt under a full moon.”

I made a note of this and in the meantime went off in search of the paracetamol. I had an appointment for a check-up with the dentist that afternoon and I was looking forward to catching up with all the X Factor/Strictly Ballroom gossip.

I knew there was something amiss in the waiting room even before the automated door opened magically for me. I could hear children shouting and playing and people chattering. The waiting room is shared by a dental and doctor’s practice and can get very busy, but never boisterous.

There was obviously no chance of a sneaky nap. There were groups of small children climbing over the seats and playing with the lift. The doors constantly opened and shut while a very old and bent man tried unsuccessfully to shuffle out.

Something had obviously changed in the waiting room, maybe a ban on noisy capering had been lifted temporarily, but there was still a full range of surly, pained-looking faces scattered about the place, so it wasn’t a free-for-all.

I checked in with the dentist’s receptionist and sat down next to a bloke who was quite happy staring into space. Next to him, there was a woman staring into space and then a huddle of young mums discussing the X Factor. I’d obviously sat in the wrong seat.

Instinctively, I leaned forward for a magazine, but the table was bare, so I got up and investigated the next table and the next, but they were all empty. Curious, I thought, maybe it was a specially-designated “no-magazine” day during which patients and their children had to amuse themselves.

If it was, then it was obviously also a “no-leaflet” day, because all the leaflet racks were empty. One rack the previous week had contained nothing but swine flu leaflets and now they had flown to goodness knows where.

I bowled up to the receptionist and told her that I would like to report a theft – a grand theft, in fact. She looked at me with some surprise.

“Someone’s nicked all the magazines and . . . all the leaflets,” I announced.

She smiled and told me they had all been removed for health and safety reasons.

“Even the health and safety leaflets?” I asked, amazed, and the receptionist nodded.

“It’s to stop the spread of infections, particularly swine flu,” she said without sounding the slightest bit convincing.

“So the swine flu leaflets which are made of porous paper were in danger of harbouring a virus for long periods and passing it on to some unsuspecting leaflet reader?” I said.

The receptionist took a very deep weary sigh and nodded again.

“That’s barmy,” I said, “if not downright mediaeval. In fact I’ve never heard anything so weird and daft.”

The receptionist shrugged and I went back to my seat and stared into space. Eventually, I moved to a seat beside the notice board so I could read – but not touch – a poster about prostate cancer.

Lucky I was wearing my drabbest, pale-grey shirt, otherwise I would have had to contend with toothache as well as Jordan withdrawal.