Taking The Plank To A New Level

Defying gravity takes more than core work.

I was driving off to the dentist for another tooth pull. I have a few rumbling teeth at the back one was playing up and the last thing I wanted was another abscess.

Working on my yoga breath to relax, I swerved around a corner and when that didn’t work I moved on to Sat Nam…. mantras, channeling my breath of fire and before I knew it I had an idea for my next book, set on the other side of Planet Hy Man.

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A city full of women who do questionable yoga, men so old they can do nothing but write poetry, and food that causes the gas of a sleeping old dog who has spent his day rummaging through the bins of an Indian takeaway——an image to put anyone off their korma.

I headed into the dentist lost in a dream of comedy, a fantasy of stories that made readers weak at the knees with mirth… crying with laughter, until the dentist mentioned ‘no guarantee.’

“If I pull out your tooth, it could set the other off,” said the dentist with a flick of her latex glove.

I, mid-dreaming of rave reviews and soaring sales, stopped… “what?”

“The tooth beside it could flare up.”

“Should I leave the tooth, then?”

She looked at me, her syringe poised like a dart… “It has to come out”.

“And the other one?”

“Let’s just see what happens,” she said.

I closed my eyes as the so-called ‘small prick’ hit my gums trying to focus on funny yoga moves and poems.

Breathe in for four… out for four.

The needle plunged deeper…

Breathe in for four… out for five.

The needle turned, moved to another point, and plunged again.

Drool filled my mouth.

She pulled the syringe out, but I knew it wasn’t the end. The needle plunged into the roof of my mouth.

A memory of Mum’s sex talk flashed past when I was eleven and Mum scared the living orgasm out of me.

“You ever wondered why cats’ bottoms are different?” said Mum.

Even at eleven, I knew it was not only weird to look at a cat’s backside but to call it a bottom.

Mum explained the difference between a male and female “cat’s bottom,” like she was explaining the “theory of gravity” and I couldn’t even spell the word.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world to stare at such an orifice.

And there I saw it, the first scene of my next book, women from Planet Hy Man trying to get to grips with a fifties sex education film from earth. I pictured women coming across an earth time capsule at a yoga camp. Women mid-pose moaning about how useless men and their frigging poetry were.

“You alright?” Said the dentist.

I nodded a thumbs up.

“I had to take the other one out as well,” she said.

I hadn’t even noticed.

Until next time happy reading