If only

Monday 9th Dec 2024

It has happened again. I can hardly believe it. Three months ago, to my horror a tooth at the front of my mouth broke off. The dentist took it out and I have had a gap ever since. I have had to wait for three months for everything to heal and then I can have it replaced.

Hardly daring to look people in the face I have smiled a gap-toothed smile and waited. By the time you read this the gap will have gone and a new tooth will be in place and my bank balance will have gone down considerably.

But now horror upon horrors a tooth on the other side has sheared off in the same way. Pam Ayres poem says that she wished she’d looked after ‘me teeth’. And now I am thinking the same. Though to be fair my teeth have not decayed they have just become weak.

I remember from my youth, an old toothbrush that we all shared and the Gibbs toothpaste in a tin had a startlingly pink paste, but there was no worry about teeth. My mother and father both had all their theirs out when they reached a certain age and that was the end of that.

At least fish and chips will not damage my teeth I thought as I sat watching the sea with my little polystyrene tray. The shop was doing a roaring trade and they had an interesting system where you order and pay then go back to your car to wait whilst they cook it for you. They gave us a little plastic pad and miraculously it beeped when the meal was ready, so we went to pick it up.

The fish could not have been fresher because over the prom wall were the fishermen. I spoke to one hopeful who had just arrived and unpacking his line said, “They say there is cod and haddock to be caught here”.

“Do you think that you will catch some?”

“Well, the thing is as soon as I get there, they say I have just missed them, if only I had got here earlier…”

And that is what happened back home when I needed a seat in the supermarket. There were two chairs but, I was too late, both were taken.

“I’ve only just arrived, if only you’d got here earlier,” she said as she settled down to rest, smiling apologetically at my predicament, but it was not her fault.

“They need more chairs,” she continued, “there are a lot of us in the same position, I have written to the manager about it”.