A trip to the dentist and the magic fairy tree

Well, by the end of Thursday I was totally exhausted. Up at 5.15am for the 7am train, arrived into Paddington at 9.45am and eventually at the Royal Free at 11am. For once, I got in to see the doc on time, as there is usually a terrible wait – it seems several of us are given the same appointment time and its first come, first served. So yesterday I got to the head of the queue!

I wasn’t there long but I do have to go back on 10 May to have a 24 hr heart monitor tape fitted, and so will have to stay down with friends as it has to be returned the next day. I’m also waiting for an appointment to do an exercise stress test, where they put you on a treadmill and alter the speed/incline while running an ECG of the heart. Great! Now there’ll be no hiding from just how unfit I am. The doctors were all really optimistic though and said they were 95% certain that I DIDN’T have pulmonary hypertension, and that my heart is under more pressure because my lungs aren’t so good.

So fingers crossed they can totally rule it out by these tests, otherwise they’ve got to do something similar to an angiogram where they put a camera into the actual arteries to monitor the pressure. Yuk, yuk and more yuk. I’m a total wuss when it comes to these things and still have to lie down for a blood test even though I have had them every month for the last 16 years! If they have to do that test, they’ll have to hit me over the head with a huge rubber mallet………

I managed to get an earlier train home and saw the muntjac near Charlbury – I see them most times and they look up as the train rattles by, but other passengers are buried in The Times and totally oblivious. Unfortunately, the earlier train only goes as far as Great Malvern and then there’s a half hour wait for a connection on to Ledbury, but the sun was shining and it was good to come home and listen to the birds instead of the throb of the city. We rumbled into Ledbury at 5.08pm and I walked to mum and dad’s, arriving as mum was just getting out of the car. A quick cup of tea, dinner for them (I’d eaten on the train courtesy of M&S Simply Food takeaway salads) and then mum and I came back here for the night. We were both so shattered we didn’t even drink any wine (!!) but managed to stay up until 10pm but then bed called.

Today I had to go for a scale and polish at the dentist in Bournville (Birmingham) and so was out of the house at 10.30am. It takes about an hour and ten minutes to reach the dentist, but we never changed to a local one because a) this is the dental practice I’ve used since I was a child and b) they WERE NHS until last year, but we enrolled on the budget plan and it’s fairly reasonable, so there we are……..

I was born in Bournville, the home of Cadbury’s chocolate, and the dentist is directly opposite a small wood – Maple Wood. As a child, we used to walk along the path parallel with the wood to go down to “The Green”, which is a village green with parade of shops and Post Office. When I came out of the dentist, I walked across the road to look through the fence at the wood – awash with a carpet of bluebells, and I took a photo on my phone for posterity’s sake. The memories came flooding back and I walked along the path to see if the fairy tree was still there.

The five year old Woozle would put a penny into a hollow of a tree and make a wish to the fairies both mum and nan assured me lived in the tree. At first I couldn’t see it but then, there it was! A holly tree had grown so large next to it that it was covering the front of the fairy tree and I moved some branches away to find the little hollow. It was still there and was full of water – just as it always had been. It made me feel funny – a nice funny and a little emotional. The fact that it was now well hidden made me kind of sad that no more little girls would share the magic of the fairy tree – maybe I was the last one who did. But then there was a part of me that felt glad – it was MY secret place and full of my old wishes to the fairies. I didn’t stick my finger in the water to see if my pennies were still there, and now I wish I had. Maybe next time I go to the dentist, I will.