Going to the dentist

has to be one of my least favourite activities. I go because I know I must. I go on a regular basis.  My old dentist "retired". I am getting used to a new one. None of this helps.

This time around the plan was for Middle Cat to pick me up and leave me to be tortured while she went to do something else. Of course that did not happen because she is still recovering from yet more back surgery. I went by tricycle and train instead. 

It is rather a long time since I have done that and it was an interesting experience. This is the long summer break for schools. Would there be children around?

No, the train was not exactly full of children - or anyone else. It had one of those carriages designed to carry a lot of bikes but, going into the city, it was almost empty. There were just two other bikes on the train. It was late enough the train had already done at least two "down and up" trips into the hills. The bike riders would already have gone "down" (which is, confusingly, up into the hills). They would be riding around the bike paths in the park or risking their lives coming down the steep winding road into the suburbs. 

I went on into the city. It seemed to be unusually full of people sitting outdoors drinking and eating. It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. Not many of them looked as if they were having "meetings" over coffee. They were too young to be "retired" and too old to be "students". This puzzled me. Were they all "on holiday"?

I went to the dentist where we discussed Japanese education rather than dentistry. (Her nephew wants to go to university in Japan.) She gave me news I did not really want to hear although the actual work won't be done for six months. I left with the words, " You can't eat for an hour."  

I pedalled back to the station along a route which should have been quieter but it also seemed to have people doing the same sort of thing as I had observed before. This puzzles me. There has been a lot of discussion about the cost of living and how the various coffee shops in the city are suffering because people have less to spend and more of them are working from home.

Perhaps yesterday was different for some reason but it was the day after New Year's Day. I thought people would be back at work. Is there a group of wealthy, indolent people who can spend their mornings drinking coffee outside the cafes in the mornings? What do they do for lunch, in the afternoons? Do they eat out at night? I tried to imagine them as a group of aliens who think they can learn about us while they sit there.

At my local station it was a relief to see all the bike riding boys (sorry, they were all boys) waiting to climb aboard the train. One of them yelled "Hiya Cat! as the doors opened. They parted to let me through and I pedalled off feeling as if life might be getting back to normal. It didn't feel like that in the city and when I went into the shopping centre to pick up milk and bread everything seemed to be just as usual.

Maybe they really were aliens in the city?