WEEKEND COLUMNISTS At the dentist, with four different implements in my mouth (a whistling narrow blue tube to draw away moisture; a large white pipe blowing in bicarbonate of soda; a sharp pointed metal scraper; and a dolly-sized oval mirror), I begin to wonder if attention is all it’s cracked up to be. The bicarbonate of soda, such an innocent substance in scones, for example, feels mighty peculiar when flushed round the mouth: a bit like drowning in very salty sherbet. The mirror’s view, I know with all my soul, cannot be flattering. The sharp implement lances and scavenges brutally – or rather “thoroughly” – as I stand (or lie) corrected. The apparatus is wielded by two separate practitioners in white tabards with blue piping, one with a moustache and ironic, bushy brows, the other with a ponytail rolled into a pale blue cap. I see my gums and back teeth reflected in the enormous goggles that dentists wear, and feel a little like Batman about to meet his doom. My daughter sits in a chair opposite with 40 felt tip pens nestled in her lap, drawing the horrors of this scene quite merrily. I am not at my best.
How to shine in such circumstances, unless one has excessively brilliant teeth or amazingly terrible ones? You can’t sing or crack jokes. I have one filling in my mouth that is a little distinguished and actually featured in a dental text book once: the cavity was filled after the neighbouring tooth was extracted and before the new one came in. My dentist knows all about this and hasn’t mentioned it for four or five years now, even though I understand it did form part of a university dentistry examination question some years back. And although the tooth is almost a star, to mention it yet again would seem a bit tragic. The man who took my tonsils out when I was eight remarked that they were the biggest pair he had seen in a child. I warmed to him.
