Oh chocolate. Oh my teeth.
After years of choc-scoffing, they look like something you’d find in a corner of a junk yard where a grubby geezer sells bits of houses and the broken things dead people leave behind.
‘Oh that old heap of stones with the green slime on them? Yeah, you can ‘ave them for …’ he pauses, sniffs, wipes nose on sleeve…’ Yeah, call it a fiver, mate. No, don’t touch ’em yet, they’re a health hazard. ‘ He shouts through to the back and an unenthusiastic youth slopes through the door with his finger up his nose.
‘Yeh? Wot?’
‘Give these a wipe down will ya, Dwayne?’ Hands him a stinking cloth with dog hairs stuck to it which Dwayne duly applies.
Makes no difference. Customer backs off. Dwayne and Grubby Geezer shrug. Dog cocks his leg against old stones with green slime on them.
That’s my teeth.
Not even the junk yard geezer wanted them so I trundled off to the dentist who, only two weeks ago, pronounced them ‘fine.’ It’s a National Health practice y’see, and they’ve got no money. So if your teeth are still in your mouth and haven’t fallen into your soup (or in my case, the chocolate mousse) they’re OK.
‘It’s that bastard Cameron’s fault’, said the dentist in a gloomy voice. He said he usually has a team of 4 year olds in the next room, making crowns and false teeth out of egg shells. Very nice they look too, once the kids have painted them with tippex but they’d gone off on a training course that day, learning how to make false limbs out of Fairy Liquid bottles so they could work extra Saturdays at the hospital gluing them on.
He could nip out to Tile Giant and see what was lying around on the floor but he couldn’t be fagged. It was nearly time for his vodka and morning trawl round Ebay. There was a job lot of Black and Decker hand drills he was bidding on.
Best thing he could do was make some little tooth-shaped squares out of an old Cornflakes box. He’d have to rip the tooth shapes out by hand because the egg shell kids had nicked his scissors to make the fairy liquid bottle arms and legs.
Cornflakes box it was then. Did I want the grey side of the cardboard or the picture of the hen?
‘The hen please. And make sure you get the eye,’ I said.
He stuck the new teeth on with spit, gave me a plastic dinosaur for being brave then waved me off with a cheery, ‘Bye then! Careful how you snog, now and if you’ve got any old pliers you don’t want, bring them in, eh?’
Times are hard for dentists, improvisation is a vital part of Cameron's austerity measures. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
