So this was my day today

I do find dentist appointments unsettling, even when it's something as routine as a couple of filling-repairs.

To neutralise my anticipation (the appointment was 11.40 am this morning) I first ran through the exercise sequence which came with my 'York Fitness Cast Iron Dumbbell Set - 20kg'.

Dumbbell exercises

Here is your author in action.

Showered, mouthwashed and toothpasted, I was lying back on the dentist's couch by a quarter to twelve. There is a tone of voice in which the dentist asks,

"Do you usually have an injection?"

where he means,

'Are you some kind of wimp?'

I nodded coolly and said,

"For the replacement of old fillings? Nope, let's give it a go without."

The dentist looked pleased (three minutes shaved off the time) and got to work.

I wasn't really expecting Marathon Man and to be honest it was a breeze; I closed my eyes and thought about Marx's theory of crises.

---

This afternoon Clare's new tablet arrived. The iPad 2 she acquired from my late mother is increasingly clunky and slow, so I decided to replace it with a Nexus 10, a copy of my own but with better battery life.

I ordered mine back in March 2014 and it's worked well. The Nexus 10 is obsolete really, so I was able to get a bargain: Google Nexus 10 Wi-Fi only, 16 GB (Certified Refurbished).

I don't really get 'refurbished'. I assume it's just surplus stock which has been sitting in a warehouse somewhere for a year or so and is now being disposed of. In any event, it arrived in true minimalist fashion: just the tablet and a travelling charger + cable.

Its Android release was early 4 (we're currently at 5.1.1 Lollipop) so I've spent the afternoon loading version after version of the OS as it makes the long climb towards Lollipop. Towards the end I was dismayed to find the tablet kept turning itself off; buy cheap and have to send it back, I thought to myself. But it was simply the Nexus's way of telling me that its battery was down to 4%.

It's currently on the charger, telling me it's still too tired to install the latest Android iteration.

I have to wait.