CNPS numbers spotted 14 (806). Now the women are gone I can return to my one true love CNPS with dedication. It was clear that the gods had been testing my devotion by keeping the 800 from me for so long, because now they rewarded me with much bounty. A couple more days like this and I will be back on course. This evening I wasn't really concentrating and I was pretty sure I glimpsed a 817. I got a reasonable look and was 99% certain. But 1% of doubt means the number must not be counted. I hope you are all playing as fastidiously as this. You are all playing, aren't you? Aren't you?
Last week on my way home from Newcastle part of my one and only filling fell out. I haven't been to the dentist for about 8 years (the last time being when I got this filling) and I've been meaning to do so fro some time. Whenever I try to get organised and make a "To Do" list, "Dentist" is always at the top of it. And yet for some reason I have always put it off. What makes this even more pathetic is that I have a dentist no more than 20 metres from my front door. I walk by it every day. And yet still I haven't popped in. Why is this? I think just laziness and possibly social awkwardness. I am not worried about the pain aspect (though I don't really like that thing they use to take the tartar off your teeth); I think it's moer to do with this stupid shyness I have over certain issues usually involving going into shops or hiring workmen for my house. I am a twat.
So it was good that my filling fell out because this forced me to go. And what is really stupid is that ages ago I noticed that the toth next to the filling was going dark, so I knew I needed other work, but just chose to ignore it. Perhaps I was hoping, like Pam Ayres, to write a popular poem on the subject of tooth decay and become famous. For those of you who don't remember the largely talent-free East Anglian poet, whose work largely relied on the fact that it was read in a funny East Anglian accent by a grinning chancer housewife. Her favourite poem and one that I admit I loved as a child (and which probably helped to remind me to brush my own gnashers regularly) was "I wish I'd looked after my teeth" - doesn't look particularly amusing does it? But look at it now "Oi Wish Oi'd lurked arfter moi teefth." It's brilliant.
The poem was such a success and led to Pam getting her own TV series and selling loads of books. Which leads me to wonder if Pam is now actually glad that she didn't look after her teeth. The fact that she didn't give a fuck about them resulted in her becoming a millionaire. If she had any artistic integrity she would now write a poem called "Oi'm glad Oi neglected moi teetfh."
This might encourage a generation of kids to never brush their teeth, but at least it would be honest.
My new dentist seemed very nice and the surgery was much more swanky than the ones I remember from the past. He had a TV up in front of the chair and loads of hi-tech equipment.
He asked me why I hadn't been to the dentist for so long. I could have tried to give him a run down on my crippling social awkwardness but instead told him that I'd just never got round to it. I laughed at this, just to make it clear to him that it wasn't because I was scared of the pain. I wanted him to know that I didn't mind injections or drilling, it was just having to meet new people in a slightly unfamiliar environment that made me worried.
He had a look round my mouth and as I suspected I needed another filling - or possibly two, but he'd be able to find out from an X Ray. He used a futuristic probe to take my X Rays, but amazingly didn't have to send these away to the lab to be developed, but was able to show me my teeth on the TV screen in front of me. I had been lucky, only one extra tooth needed a filling, and he said it was good I had come when I had, as the decay had nearly reached the nerve. My other filling had fallen out just in time. Possibly that tooth has been aware that its neighbour was in trouble and had deliberately harmed itself in order to help him. You can say what you like about me, but I have very benevolent teeth. I hope they put that on my grave-stone (which may happen sooner than you think, I am doing a parachute jump on Sunday).
"Richard Herring 1967-2004
He had very benevolent teeth.
And his funeral congregation was packed with weeping women, some of whom then lezzed up."
That's the wording I want mum, and if my mum doesn't put that on my grave, I want one of you to to go to my grave-stone and write that on with Tippex.
I was offered three choices for my fillings: long lasting, but ugly silver filling for cheap, more aesthetically pleasing white filling (like I'd already had) with the caveat that it can tend to crumble and shift over a seven year period as I had already found out - this was about £100 a tooth or super-duper futuristic tooth filling made from porcelain or something (possibly white gold) which would be designed by a computer to exactly fill the cavity and which would then be stuck in and would last probably forever. This cost £350 a tooth. I nearly went for it just because it sounded so futuristic and amazing and the dentist was clearly hoping I could be persuaded to go that way. But I figured that if I went for white fillings and if they fell apart every seven years, it would be 21 years before I had made good on the investment of the futuristic Terminator style tooth. Now in 21 years time I think my teeth might very well have all fallen out (and let's face it I possibly only have 5 days to live anyway) so I think I'm going to plump for the slightly vain £100 fillings.
Perhaps my benevolent teeth will feel slighted that I do not give them as much consideration as they give each other. Perhaps they feel they deserve the more expensive model for all the good they do. But if I give two teeth a £350 filling then all the other teeth are going to want one too. They will deliberately force sugary food into the gaps between them and create cavities that weren't there before so that they can feel as swanky and as expensive as the others. It could be a disaster.
It is a rule in my life never to have a tooth that costs more than my stereo. So either I need to get a better stereo or its tough titties for my diseased and rotting molars.
Of course Pam Ayres made so much from her poem that £350 a tooth would seem a small price to pay for what they have given her in return. It seems wrong that someone who didn't care at all abut her teeth gets the capacity to reward them so greatly, whilst I, who has done a bit to help them out, ends up looking like an ungrateful miser.
