After the disappointment of rain washing out the barbecue on our camping trip, my son asked if I could build him a wee campfire in the back garden. No problem! 

The clinic was able to take me at short notice. My broken tooth had been causing me increasing discomfort (see post about the Boys’ Night In for background).

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’ve always viewed going to the dentist to be as much fun as……well, going to the dentist. 

My concerns were not allayed when I was in the waiting room and one of the dentists entered and asked the receptionist if she had a screwdriver.

The dentist was unknown to me but insisted on making small talk about the weather and holidays while she moved about behind me making a sinister noise which sounded disturbingly similar to sharpening a knife.

One of my front teeth had essentially disintegrated until all that was left was filling.

This is not uncommon in my mouth where the ratio of natural tooth to man-made formula has shifted dramatically to the latter in recent years. In essence I’m a dental cyborg.

The dentist patiently explained that she believed it could be filled rather than crowned but that a normal filling would be aesthetically offensive. In other words I would have a big black tooth at the front of my mouth. 

She said I could get a white filling but it would be more expensive. I asked about getting a gold one and she laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t joking. I went for the white one.

She continued with the usual process of injecting, drilling, poking, sighing, and forcing while her assistant seemed intent on forcing a plastic tube down my throat as if I was Ian Brady on hunger strike.

Half an hour later I was back out in the street and wandering around slightly dazed (a result of the price, not the dental work).

Unwisely I went straight for lunch at a local cafe, ordering a flat white, soup and sandwich. I had not taken into account that my mouth was still frozen up and most of the food ended up spread across my face and shirt. Several of the other diners shot quick glances at me and smiled sadly.

The anaesthetic was so effective that it had frozen the whole left side of my face, including the eye. This led to my mouth drooping and tears streaming out of my eye without me being able to control the actions.

The whole effect was that I didn’t just look like a stroke victim, I looked like a particularly unhappy stroke victim.

I’ve been to the dentist more times in the past couple of years than in my whole life. Years of not looking after my oral health has caught up with me with a series of fillings, extractions and root canal work. 

I ignored the warnings, I’m paying the price and the end result is not pretty to look at. It’s like my teeth are acting out their own miniature version of The Keith Richards Story. 

I’ve always been neutral about the virtues and drawbacks of computer games. I’ve never been particularly interested in them but neither do I believe they are responsible for some creeping immorality among younger generations.

Of course computer games were around when I was a kid but it was all a bit different then. I remember my older brother had a clunky BBC Micro computer which was about the size of our bath.

The games were on cassettes and used to take about 45 minutes to load (imagine telling this to a kid now). We would all sit huddled around the flickering screen waiting for the end of the interminable loading process only for a message to eventually flash onto the blank screen, ‘Loading failed’.

When the games did work they were basic and involved the frenzied bashing of keys with your fingers until they were red and sore. I remember the white arrows on the black keyboard wore off through repeated thumping.

But even then I had little patience for it. While my brothers seemed to be able to sit in the same place playing the same game until there was a circle of dust around them, I always thought there were more useful things to do. While they were playing Match Day or Tracksuit Manager I was often off playing in the mud and eating worms.

And now the great revolution of generations brings me to the point where my son is starting to show an interest in computer games and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I understand the value of them in terms of education and motor skills but there are parts of it which make me uncomfortable.

The effect on personality is remarkable. My sweet little boy who loves his daddy and cuddles is replaced by a growling, seething ball of frustration and rage. At one point I actually witnessed him punching the screen of my iPad when he was displeased.

His cherubic lark-like voice seems to change also. Replaced by rasping, husky streams of invective closer to the sound of the monster from The Exorcist film. Do not dare to interrupt.

‘Hi wee man, do you want a drink?’

‘GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!!!’

Trying to tell him to calm down is futile and counter-productive. I spent several minutes this morning trying to have a conversation with him about how it was just a game and he didn’t need to get angry. Within moments he was roaring again and when I gently challenged him he exploded.

“I’M NOT ANGRY AT THE GAME, I’M ANGRY AT YOU!!!!!’

The games themselves seem inoffensive enough and usually involve an animal of some sort trying to avoid oncoming objects. But when the character inevitably ends up squashed against the screen it often leads to tears and a seeming feeling of genuine anguish.

I’m not going to stop my son playing the games, that would be pointless and cruel. I just want to make sure that he doesn’t spend too much time on them at the expense of experiencing many of the more wonderful things which I want to introduce him to. There’s a certain temptation in plonking him in front of the tablet for hours while I catch up on some Netflix binge-watching but I’d rather mix it up a bit and do things together. I think that’s better for him. It’s definitely better for me.

The key to having your own blog is instinctively knowing what people want to read about.

There are two main schools of thought on whether wearing socks with flip-flops or sandals should be considered trendy.

I think it should.

Everyone else in the world thinks it should not. 

When we play superheroes I always end up having to be Wonder Woman