Wonky teeth

For a long time the British have been known for their dreadful teeth - not very white, not very straight, sometimes just gaps instead of teeth.

It seems that things are changing. One survey said that 53 per cent of under-35s have had cosmetic dental work. And many celebrities sport pristine rows of shiny white teeth that ironically look entirely artificial.

Personally I find slightly wonky teeth much more attractive than the visually perfect variety that are now so ubiquitous. David Bowie's less than perfect teeth were part of his appeal, and I was disappointed when he finally took against them and went for some better ones.

My own teeth are not very white, and two of my front teeth overlap, but it's never bothered me - or Jenny. Nobody's going to avoid me because they dislike my teeth. I certainly don't want to spend thousands of pounds remaking my teeth to fit some fashionable aesthetic image.

We're encouraged to buy all sorts of special accessories to clean our teeth more thoroughly - floss, inter-dental brushes, electric toothbrushes etc - but do they really make much difference? I just use a standard toothbrush and that works for me. I still have all 26 teeth, though some of them are well-filled (six teeth were extracted when I was a boy as my jaws were too small to accommodate all 32).

My teeth are just fine as they are. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

John's tooth

The price people will pay for a seemingly utterly trivial item, simply because it's associated with some global celebrity, is staggering. Often of course the motive is money and the assumption that said item will turn a handsome profit when resold.

In 2011 one of John Lennon's teeth was auctioned with a guide price of between £10,000 and £20,000. With it was a sworn affidavit from John's former housekeeper that it was genuine and given her by John.

A Canadian dentist bought it for £19,000 and he did in fact see it as a potential money-spinner.

I can only hope he didn't mislay such a tiny item, that it didn't somehow slip down the back of the sofa or get swept into the hoover.

Mind you, you can never be truly sure an item is genuine. Even if it comes with a sworn affidavit, is that totally reliable? But what the hell, if you can afford to splash out £19,000 you're probably pretty wealthy and won't miss the odd wasted £19,000.

Signatures are notoriously dodgy. Busy celebrities often leave their staff to forge signatures on their behalf, so something supposedly signed by the Fab Four may not be the real deal. The Beatles were known to be adept at forging each other's signatures.

Hand-written copies of famous Beatles lyrics sell for huge sums (the hastily-scribbled lyrics for Hey Jude went for $910,000 a few years back), but again there must be a money motive, since who cares what the original lyrics looked like?

But John Lennon's tooth got me wondering. What happened to all the other personal items belonging to the Beatles? John's toothbrush and toothpaste for example. Are they stashed in some millionaire's safe? Or were they just thrown out with the rubbish? Who knows?

Breakfast

Nick eats his breakfast.
Granola, then bread and marmalade.
Hartleys Olde English Thick Cut Marmalade.
With a lot of tooth-rotting sugar.
Nick has only 26 teeth.
Six were removed as a child because of his small jaws.
He still has all his own teeth.
Only one root filling, no crowns.
His 90 year old mother also has all her own teeth.
He thinks his sister too has all her own teeth.
As he eats he remembers something curious.
As a child he never had a rocking horse.
He thinks it would have been soothing and calming
to rock the horse gently back and forth
back and forth
back and forth
But he doesn't feel the lack of a rocking-horse experience.
He doesn't feel emotionally deprived in any way.
He doesn't feel the victim of poor parenting.
He had never even reflected before
on the absence of this popular children's plaything.
Nick has had the same breakfast for many years.
Granola, then bread and marmalade.
He sees no need to change it.
It suits him perfectly.
It never disappoints him.
It's an ideal combination of tastes.
He seldom thinks about his six missing teeth.
The remaining 26 do an excellent job.

Down in the mouth

The tooth fairy who’s so shamefully neglected Heart has been neglecting me too. I have a raging tooth abscess that makes eating or drinking virtually anything extremely painful. It’s the first time I’ve had an abscess and I sincerely hope it’s the last.

Clearly that feckless tooth fairy has been down the Wand and Tutu with her hedonistic Fairyland mates, happily supping the fairy nectar and forgetting all those mere mortals relying on her diligent protection. I’ve already sent a furious email to the Fairyland Directorate.

I went to the dentist because of a persistent toothache. Liz couldn’t see anything wrong so she took an x-ray and then showed me the nasty little shadow creeping around the root of my molar. That’s an abscess, she explained in her most professional, seen-it-all-before, nothing-to-worry-about tones.

There are two options, she added. Either extract the tooth or suck out the toxins and do a root filling. I looked round for the tooth fairy to ask her advice but she still wasn’t there. There weren’t even any lingering traces of fairy dust on the windowsill. She had obviously gone on a week-long binge without a care in the world and I was on my own here.

Well, since as some of you know I’ve only got 26 teeth anyway, I decided to defend my poor little molar and prevent it being sacrificed to the forces of bacterial darkness. I shall endure the rigours of the dental chair to save my frail, embattled chopper.

I’m sure it won’t be that bad. It can’t be worse than waxing, surely? Or maybe it can. I hope Liz has the epidural organised. And maybe a few bottles of whisky, just to be on the safe side.

In the meantime, I’m taking a course of high-dose antibiotics to clear the infection and hopefully the pain. At the moment chewing my favourite foods is more like chewing a rose bush. Jenny’s culinary expertise is wasted on my failing machinery.

If I ever catch up with that wretched, indolent tooth fairy, she’ll get a piece of my mind. And I’ll confiscate her magic wand for a week. That’ll wipe the grin off her face.

PS: It’ll all cost me an arm and a leg because the whole surgery’s just gone private and I carelessly hadn’t got round to signing up with a new NHS dentist. Rats.
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Good grief! Jesus with an erection! Whatever next?