I have run my life, for a long time now, on denial, postponement, and prevarication – on the morally dubious notion that tomorrow, if it exists at all, is nothing to do with me. The putting-off until tomorrow what you might more wisely do today is how I run the show from my end. When my tongue snakes into a newfound cavern in a molar, I quickly tell myself, do nothing, that’s Old Anson’s problem, not mine.
This husk of tusk will be a disaster for that old bloke one day when the pain begins to bay like a goaded bureaucrat. And that’ll be the least of it. Old Anson will have quite the backlog of maintenance confronting him by the time he arrives on the scene.
He’ll be assailed not only by tooth pain, but a thousand other tortures – lost loves, neglected friendships, ignored opportunities, an impoverished retirement...
And to hell with him, he deserves it all. As instructed by Jesus, his younger self took no thought for the morrow, and he is in for a thumping late-life comeuppance – the bill is his. So many of his excruciations might have been nipped in the bud by a little forethought, by striking while the iron was at least tepid.
Credit: Robin Cowcher I wait until my car, like Iceland, is leaking smoke from every fissure before I finally give in and have it serviced. It is by then knocking and clunking and giving off keening entreaties as if there’s someone trapped in the boot. Recently I took it to the garage and Nick, the mechanic, looked up its service book .
