It's That Time - It's Tooth Hurty.

I am being a brave and tough little soldier - but I am unwell. I have toothache.
It's one of those big beggars at the back. Not a wisdom tooth, one of the ones right in front of them, on the right-hand side. "'Ere, ook, can oo ee it?"
I have been dosing up with painkillers but this can't go on. Something will have to be done. That means bearing one of the things I dread and loathe most in life - a trip to the dentist's!
I am not in any way scared of seeing the dentist, as many people are! No, that is not the problem. Indeed, I am approching my half century and have never had a filling in my life and, while I have had a couple of extractions over the years to make room for jostling among the chaps, I have never experienced a knee on my chest in the dentis't's chair or any real pain. I do, as it happens, have a problem with my gums receeding as my age advances. It's like the old Tommy Cooper gag. "My teeth are fine but my gums have got to come out." Still, the recession is now in check so I have nothing to fear.
No, the problem I have is with the dentist himself. I transferred to him a few years ago after the dentist I had seen since I was a little boy went private and started referring to me as "a client". My new chap is a really nice guy, at heart, and he does National Health Service work while most of the other money-grabbing gnasher Nazis have turned profit maximisers.


The trouble with my new man is that he is so........well......bloody full of beans. Pither is not, by nature these days, a natural athlete, hewn out of solid granite and with a ravenous appetite for life's thrills. That is where the root (pardon the pun) of the problem lies. My dentist, on the other hand, is fit, enthusiastic, healthy and glowing with inner-vitality, despite being a good five years older than me. Hell, he even has a glossy coat! He spends his weekends either running marathons (for charity, of course), mountaineering, cycling or parachuting (seriously). He even has photos and Press clippings on the wall to prove it all. Jesus, on a Saturday morning he has probably run and cycled up K2 and then parachuted back down again before I have rolled over in bed and lit my first fag.

You know the sort?

He is also into "alternative" treatments, notably acupuncture, hypnosis and aromatherapy (for which he, of course, also has hundreds of certificates plastered around the walls) and no doubt spends his evenings in the lotus position on top of the wardrobe, surrounded by scented candles and chanting priests, before retiring to spend the night breathing pure oxygen in a hermetically sealed bag!
He always bounds into the room, over to where you are lying prostrate in the chair, with a ridiculously cheery "HELLO, how are we? What a simply lovely day." The man positively exudes adrenaline and reeks of ozone. Then, the worst part. He asks you what you have been up to lately and follows that by detailing HIS recent achievements. I usually say something like: "Not much. Went to the pub last Thursday, bought some new drawing pins at the weekend, had a bath on Sunday then just watched telly." His list is fucking ridiculous. "Oh, well Jacasta and I completed the Paris-Dakar Rally on Saturday morning, scaled Anaperna for lunch then invented a cure for Aids in the afternoon before little Tamsin, Blanche and I swam the Channel. Then, on Sunday................." Oh God, give me a break. It's not a good idea to say "is there any chance you could bugger off and die?" to a man who is, seconds later, going to be messing in your mouth with knives, hammers and drills. You are often in pain already when you go to see him but he leaves you making you think that you actually died five years ago.
I shall have to go to see him. I have no choice. My dentist is a nice man, after all, but he's got to go to Grantham. Sorry.PS. Don't tell him I wrote this.

PPS. Wanna know what a real dentist should be like? Paste this into your browser and empathise (thanks Billy)..........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN68WK4_YfI