Why do these things always happen to me?

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment to replace a tooth cap that I had lost without even noticing it: “Perhaps you swallowed it …?” he had helpfully suggested when we met a fortnight previously for my six monthly check-up.

Is it Murphy’s Law that says “If it is possible for something to go physically/technically wrong, at some stage it probably will”?

Today I’m proposing a new variant of it, viz. ‘Nelson’s Law’, which says:

“If ever you are having a shave before doing something really important, e.g. having a passport photo taken, going on a first date, or perhaps visiting a doctor or dentist, you will almost certain cut yourself to ribbons”.

That is what I did yesterday.

Slightly, and only slightly, behind schedule I nipped upstairs at about 8.15am to conduct my ablutions and make sure that I had given my teeth a good scrub before opening my ‘north and south’ to the attentions of the man with the high-speed drill and the pink-water mouth rinse. Scraping hastily around the old ‘boat race’ without my brain really engaged, suddenly (up near the right eye area) I ‘nicked’ myself. I knew it was a bad ‘un the moment I did it for two reasons – firstly, I felt myself actually doing it, and secondly, the ‘claret’ began to flow quite copiously almost immediately.

I carried on shaving, hoping that if I paid the incident no attention it would go away.

No chance. Within about twenty seconds, the ruby ready was running down my face to the point where it definitely needed attention.

If I am seeking to convey the sort of thing I was dealing with, try thinking the second Muhammad Ali versus Henry Cooper fight (Ali’s defence of the World Heavyweight title in 1966), about twenty seconds after ‘Enery’s eyebrow had exploded.

I reached for the loo roll and applied a wad to the offending area. It soon went bright red and then leaking down my cheek. There was nothing else for it. Replacing the loo roll temporary bandage at regular intervals, I pressed on with the task of finishing my shave and then applied a bigger piece of loo roll and held it resolutely to my face, dressed and then went downstairs.

About fifteen minutes to my departure for the dentist.

I read a newspaper in front of the television and then went to the mirror in the downstairs toilet in order to both remove the loo roll, which up to that point had seemingly been doing a good job of stemming the flow, and then seeing just what sort of horror the hopefully-now-dried-up wound had left me with cosmetically.

Almost immediately the second of the above became irrelevant because, perhaps inevitably, as I removed the toilet roll package from my face, I felt it lifting the scab off the wound and the blood beginning to flow again [think Henry Cooper again, just before the referee stopped the fight].

A swift move to the kitchen and a frantic attempt to stem the renewed torrent followed. Eventually I set off for the dentist’s with a large elastoplast stuck diagonally across my face.

There was nothing else for it – I did my best to make a joke of it as I walked into the dentist’s consulting room. Both he and his assistant were plainly stifling giggles as I was motioned to take up my position in the chair.

Forty-five minutes later I was walking out on the street again, £177 lighter, sporting a numb left-hand side of the mouth and an instruction not to eat anything for a minimum of two hours, and definitely no nuts at all over the Christmas period.

As I type in the wee hours this morning, I still have the Elastoplast across my face. Hopefully I can remove it at some point today without another cascade of blood spilling my face …