Yes - after I wrote that post, the pain really started to set in - thank god for co-proxamol!
I spent a really terrible night, dribbling bloody saliva into my pillow, spending most of it only semi-asleep or awake from pain. The next day wasn’t nearly as bad. Since then, there have been some incidents of higher pain/bad throbbing/aching, but nothing as intense as that first day.
No swelling, thank god. No cheeks (or cheek rather) like Marlene Dietrich either 
A week on and I am still getting some soreness, the hardest thing is keeping the stupid things clean. They are still these big hollow pits - the gum appears to be slowly closing over - but food gets in no matter what I do and just goes putrid. I am endlessly trying to swill it out, remove it with a cotton bud or a toothpick - if I don’t this evil, evil taste starts to trickle into my mouth and I am frightened of it going septic.
By the way: clove oil has been an excellent remedy. I got sick of painkillers - the co-proxamol started to make me high and tripped out, and the panadeine (paracetamol codeine) just pissed me off too, I prefer feeling lucid. Clove oil rubbed around the outside of the gum-hole with a cotton wool bud is a real lifesaver.