In the chair

I'm just back from having my teeth cleaned.  I keep running my tongue along sharp ridges instead of the smooth tartar that was there this morning.  I love going to the dentist.  I love the illusion of renewal.  Until the next bottle of wine I can believe that mine are teeth never furred with black coffee, fried eggs, fags.  When I was little, our dentist had a shark's jaw on his mantelpiece and as the chair tipped back you stared straight into the teeth of doom.  

My wisdom teeth were removed by a student at Guy's Hospital.  They hadn't lived up to their promise so they had to go.  From the chair I saw a magnificent sweep of the Thames down to Westminster.  It was like being stuck at the top of the London Eye with free drugs and a supply of that pink swill that tastes like Southern Comfort with a TCP chaser. Spit it out? A view like that makes you want to stay there drinking all afternoon.  

Someone I knew at university is now a dentist.  As a student he was horribly nervous which made his hands shake and sweat drip down his face.  When he was performing his first root canal his glasses slipped off his nose into the patient's mouth.  

This kind of story does nothing to relieve my husband of his own anxieties.  He used to drive 150 miles to see a reassuring dentist.  He is also a friend so at least they could go for a few beers afterwards. Actually Mr P has dreadful toothache today so it's his turn in the tilting chair tomorrow.   This morning he whacked his thumb whilst nailing wood to the wall.

  

'Wow, for a while that really took my mind off the tooth,' he said.  'My grandad often had toothache and he said when it got bad he'd just hit himself with a hammer.  It bloody works.'

The dentist we have now sticks postcards from across the world on the ceiling so you can see what exciting lives the other patients lead.  I was envying a picture of Verona today when the hygienist peered into my mouth, pulled up his mask and said 'It is the most appalling smell of rotting cabbage'.

'What?  Coming from my mouth?'

'Oh no, in the fields around Fakenham, I was finishing a sentence from before you came in.'  

His assistant, who is the wife of our plumber, started smiling. 'God, I thought you were being even less tactful than usual' she said  'like the time with the tomato seed.'  They both roared with laughter.  I guess some jokes are quite specialised.  

After scraping, chipping and whizzing the hygienist said 'Busy Mum of Three, you have a touch of gingivitus.'

For a moment I thought he was referring to my hair.

'Come in next week and I'll show you how to brush your teeth so you'll feel like this every day!'

Feel like what every day?  A woman with bleeding gums known as 'Busy Mum of Three'?  I must remember to book that in.