Today at the Dentist.

I think it’s about time for another dentist post. I went today to have the partial denture fitted – the one that was constructed to fill the two gaps in my lower teeth that have been there since both Adam and I were lads.

It’s horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible… I swear it’s worse than a brace, even though I never had one so I can’t speak with authority. (When I was a kid, not even the girls had braces. The general view in Britain was ‘if God had wanted me to spend two years looking like all my teeth had holes in them, he would have arranged for me to be born in America.’ Ha!) As I was saying, it’s horrible. I feel like a wild pony that’s just had its first bit forced into its mouth. I want to kick and bite, although not on anything too tough because it hurts if I do that. Having something hard and unfamiliar in one’s mouth is most disconcerting. A certain type of woman might be familiar with that phenomenon, but I’m not even a woman, let alone one of a certain type. Eating is a strange and slightly unnerving experience, and it doesn’t even make me look younger. I’ll give it a few days and see whether I get used to it.

I wanted a pee while I was there, so I paid my first ever visit to the TLC For Smiles toilet. It has a notice on the wall which says Please dispose of sanitary items in the bin provided. I wanted to write underneath ‘What should I do with the unsanitary items?’ And when I came out, the receptionist went rushing in there making a sort of ‘grrrrr…’ sound. ‘You have to turn the tap off yourself,’ she said sharply when she returned. I didn’t know, did I? You expect everything to be automatic these days. The hand dryer was automatic, so it seemed reasonable to expect the tap to turn itself off. I’ve even been known to walk into manual doors in the mistaken belief that they would open without the need of effort on my part. Modern times are like that – confusing.

I swear the dentist was wearing a different uniform than usual. It looked too casual, somehow. He seemed a bit put out when I suggested that he looked like a punk rocker, which he didn’t really, but it sounded right. I’m wondering now whether they’ll let me change to a woman dentist. I’m none too keen on having a man put cold, wet fingers in my mouth. And warm, wet fingers are even worse.

On the subject of woman dentists, Medea was sitting in the reception area when I came out. Remember her, from about a year ago? There followed lots of interesting, informed chat about Romanian vampires, the fact that dentists are crap at doing scale and polish jobs, and whether the Greek Medea was a wronged woman or merely a bad guy.

And on the subject of Greeks, my dentist’s nurse (I wish I knew her name) looked more tanned than she had done the previous week. I asked her why and she said she’d spent time on a sun bed last Saturday. Ah, right. That puts her out of my league, then. By which I mean a higher social class, of course...