On Tuesday, I awoke to discover one side of my face had swollen up. My first thought was that I might have a dental abscess but felt no pain in my mouth and went to work as usual.

Called NHS24 in the afternoon and their nurse recommended ibuprofen to take down the swelling but suggested that it could be mumps (the inflammation is in the right area). Checked with my parents and confirmed that I had mumps when I was younger which made it less likely. Had a bit of a temperature and was generally under the weather by the afternoon.

Off work yesterday but back today before a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. The doctor checked my ears and mouth and wasn’t certain what was responsible for the swelling but she thought wisdom tooth problems were the most likely cause and prescribed me an antibiotic to control the likely infection. I don’t have a dentist – haven’t been since I had a (free) student dentist in 2002 – and, with the advent of free checkups in Scotland have been thinking about going.

The doctor told me I could call a service which would tell me which practices in the town were accepting new NHS patients to save me needing to ring round all of them. Great, I said – that’s what had been putting me off. She wasn’t too optimistic about my chances though.

So, here we go: blog project.

How easy is it to get a dentist in Scotland?

As directed, I got the phone number for “Practitioner Services” from the medical centre reception.

Phone call #1: Practitioner Services tell me they’re not the right people to find me a dentist and give me another number to call.

Phone call #2: I’m through to Fife’s dental help line – wrong area. They dig out a couple of numbers (one daytime, one evening) to call for my area.

Phone call #3: “This extension is not vaild.” I’m directed to press 0 to get through to a general switchboard; I do so and get no answer.

I google the local NHS health board phone number and call it.

Phone call #4: I ask about dentists and am told that office will be closed now. I ask for the number to call tomorrow.

So, I have a number to call (my fifth) tomorrow. To be continued…

Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at the weekend. Pretty enjoyable, but a bit baffling in places if you’ve not seen the first film – or, as in my case, you’ve seen the first film but forgotten much of it in the three years since.

The CGI was so good in most parts that I didn’t even think about it – there were just one or two Kraken shots which gave the game away. Johnny Depp steals the film, acting everyone else off the screen; poor Orlando Bloom is left looking, if not wet, then a little moist. Bill Nighy plays a very convincing Davy Jones, although I don’t understand why he was Scottish, and I’m sure he didn’t look like that when he was in The Monkees. Keira Knightley surprises by being quite good in a few scenes, but is pretty ropey at times. I can’t help remembering that awful Domino movie – one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in the cinema, and I only saw the trailer.

At points, Dead Man’s Chest was exciting and had great snippets of dialogue. But, at two-and-a-half hours, it’s too damn long and some sequences dragged. The scene Alex describes as “exhilarating swashbuckling” I’m afraid I found overlong – you know no-one is going to win the swordfight, and, because the MacGuffin in being fought over is elsewhere, the action feels ilke a sideshow. Plus, the rolling water wheel was a retread of the rolling cage on the island early on – part of an entire section which could have been dropped to make the film a more manageable length without any impact on the plot.

Finally, I felt cheated by the end: yes, I enjoyed most of the film, but I expected to be rewarded for sitting through it. Instead, it stuck up two fingers and put out its hand for the ticket price to the second sequel. The Empire Strikes Back might have got away with it, but Dead Man’s Chest doesn’t.

For other views: Ryan, Gordon.

Here’s something that puzzles me: the frequency of stretched limousines on the streets of Falkirk in the early evening during the week. I’ve lived in, worked in and visited many different places, and never have I seen such a preponderence of limos.

There may be only two in total (one white, one pink) but, walking home from the station, I might spot them three or four times a week, nearly always accompanied by sound of the young female occupants shrieking at passersby. Six o’clock on a Tuesday evening surely isn’t a common time for hen nights? Occasionally a rentable fire engine with a similar clientele passes, Sirens wailing.

Possible explanations:

• Falkirk is the hen night capital of Scotland
• Limousines are the place to be seen if you’re an affluent young woman in Falkirk.
• It’s actually dirt cheap and undercuts the local bowling alley for low-priced fun.
• There is a very small group of girls who enjoy the experience so much they hire a limo over and over again.
• The local novelty car hire company is trying an innovative method to promote its service.
• The daughter of the owner of the local novelty car hire company likes taking her friends out for a spin.

Alas, I fear this is a mystery that will remain unsolved.

Seven lessons into my beginners’ Mandarin course, I was contemplating how the brain deals with different language. We were doing a role play of a fruit stall and as the shopkeeper I asked “hái yào?” (“Anything else?”). The customer wanted to say “Nothing.”

“Just say ‘rien’,” someone else suggested, and that desire to pluck a word from a different foreign language makes me wonder if the brain has one section for native language and another for all others.

It was the same when I was in Germany last year. If I didn’t know a word, it wasn’t the English that came straight to mind but, if I knew it, the French. Sometimes German words pop into my head when I don’t know the Chinese. Probably, though, on more occasions than not it’s the English word that I think of first, but I don’t notice myself doing it because it’s so natural. In that case, each word (as a concept) would have its own cubby-hole in my memory with a version in each language, including English, attached to it.

This is rather unscientific, of course. Is this psychology or linguistics? Either way I’m sure people with PhDs have investigated this in great depth.