DARK COMEDY EPISODE 12
Squeezing the larynx . . .
Thank you for your latest epistle Ralph . . .
although I think that one or two solecisms may have crept in. It is important to know dear, when to deploy “it’s” (which either means “it is” or “it has”) while penning an intelligible piece in the English language. If what you are writing does not mean either of the above — and still requires an I — T — S, then the I — T — S required is “its!” I am also starting to wonder, favourite nephew, if you have made any recent consideration of your future? Is it really to be spent entirely in the employ of the Carpool postal sorting office?
I may, it is true, be slightly discommoded by my recent — very physical — experience at the Inner Hamlet NHS dental surgery. Although it represented a morning away from the Perfect Retirement Housing Complex, I did not anticipate that my mental state would leap from one of extreme torpor to one of extreme torment!
I think I may have told you about the grisly tooth and jaw pain that I have been racked by over the past several weeks? Well in all my years as an operative (40) I have never been reduced to person handling a practitioner of the dental arts. Until today! It is all very well administering an injection of local anaesthetic to a patient’s gum, but it does have to succeed in deadening the tooth concerned. It is absolutely no good persisting with any attempt to drill on an exposed nerve . . . I’m afraid I squeezed the larynx of said practitioner between thumb and forefinger — to prevent him from continuing — and to communicate the extremity of my agony. (I was quite successful in this pet, given that his breathing was still on the raspy side when I departed.) I don’t think he quite expected a lady decked out in cashmere, and pearls, to deploy tactics of such magnitude. The tension and general atmosphere in the room resembled that on the bridge of a submarine diving into the depths, mid-way through battle! My waistline is still riven with spasms due to the arching of my torso during this session, and I can quite understand how our application of “special measures” during the Cold War got results!
Yours
Aunt Evangeline
