in which my mouth is a battlefield

Maybe it's the battlefield of Gettysburg, speaking (as I think we weren't) of the 1920 picture of my grandfather with the two old warriors... There isn't a speck of it that hasn't been pummelled, scraped, bayoneted, shot, punched, hacked at, or twisted into an unnatural position. It's full of blood. And like all good battlefields, it has a very nasty crater. I think the process of collecting up the wounded could take some days.

The instructions they gave me go like this:

Eat soft food. (Like, that's if I eat anything... and there I was going to have beef jerky.)

NO alcoholic refreshment. (There goes the medicinal brandy, then: even at Gettysburg I think they got a swig of that.)

Rest, but DO NOT lie down. Sleep with the head elevated. (Fun! I'll get a lot of sleep, then!)

Do not rinse till tomorrow. (Ugh.)

The dentist was talking a lot about the desirability of blood clots. And to think I'm missing the Pen Pusher Eight launch party for this!

Anyway, I'm exhausted. I'm just going to go and... er... recline, with my upper body elevated. Jolly japes! Soup, anyone? (You make it.)

(PS - I can only begin to imagine how Martin Amis felt. But ast least they were making his mouth look better. Mine looks like the surface of the flipping moon.)