Generally I take comfort from the Dalai Lama's advice-- 'Either there's a solution to your problem or there isn't. If there is, no need to worry about your problem. And if there isn't, there's nothing to be done, so need to worry either.' But not when bits fall off my teeth and they start to ache. There's a cure for that, yes indeed, but it will cost money and involve a lot of pain before and after. Dental bills are the one time a Canadian knows what it's like to be American, because even our health plans don't cover 100% of dental work. Damn those 19th century doctors who wanted to make such a big deal about teeth-pullers not being **gentlemen** like themselves, which I'm told is why dentists' services weren't considered medical and hence weren't admitted to universal medical coverage when it finally became available.

However I started reading Moon Over Soho in Sunday's rain and finished it a scant 24 hours later. And then turned the house upside down looking for Rivers of London on account of not remembering anything that happened in the last twenty pages of that, bar the brokered peace, and certainly not the start of Moon Over Soho. A happy time was had by all. And this time in Rivers of London I catch a whiff of Peter being Sam Vimes, which whizzed past me last July.

paleaswater has sent me the book that Ima Ichiko's Ritsu will probably write as his dissertation. Pandemonium and Parade, a scholarly study of youkai. I have a couple of Japanese books on the subject, lightweight and not exactly informative, so this may be the English academic correction I need.