Monday, 3 December 2012

Erasing the Record.

I was sure I had a dental appointment this month, but when I checked my appointments calendar to confirm the date there was no record of it. I was sure I’d put it there and I was sure I’d seen it there, but no. OK, I must have forgotten to record it, so next option:

They always give me an appointment slip which I keep in a pocket of my backpack and never discard until I’ve kept the appointment. I went through every piece of paper in that pocket and all the other pockets. Nothing. OK, maybe I accidentally threw it away, so next option: call the dentist and check.

I went to my physical address book; I went to my mobile phone address book; I went to the local directory and looked for them in both the business and classifieds section; I did the same with yellow pages. There was no record of my dentist in any of them. Eventually I found their website and got their number. I do indeed have an appointment on Wednesday 19th at 2.45.

Anyone familiar with MR James’s Casting the Runes might find this a little disquieting. The condemned man has a diary, you see, and all entries beyond ‘the time allowed’ have been erased.

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