Town Mouse
Dr Johnson’s poem London was all about the age-old dream of quitting the corrupt and crime-infested city for the innocent countryside – for ‘some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play’.
Whatever an osier may be, it all sounds very lovely. In the poem, written in 1738, many decades before his more famous ‘tired of life’ comment, Sam complains that the values of London town are all askew. It’s a terrible place, he says, filled with greed and vanity… ‘Where all are slaves to gold, Where looks are merchandise, and where smiles are sold.’
Sounds a bit like Instagram! Clearly I have been infected by this cult of vanity since returning to the smoke, after 12 years spent breathing a purer air. I have just forked out for a bespoke suit, and endured great pain to have my teeth cleaned.
The sorry saga started a few months ago. I hadn’t been to the dentist for many years. I’d experienced no pain, and so I thought it best to avoid the expense and suffering involved. In any case, rural types are considerably less vain than London fops. Wonky, non-white teeth were not a particular problem.
I decided to pop in to the dentist on Uxbridge Road, near me in west London, for a check-up. The dentist put me in his gleaming white chair and spoke some sort of jargon to his assistant while examining my mouth. I could feel my heart beating with nerves. I was then taken to another room where another orderly put my head in a clamp and took some X-rays.
The dentist then sat me down, showed me the X-rays on a computer screen and spoke eloquently on the terrible tragedy of my teeth. The scene reminded me of the bit in The Third Man where Major Calloway convinces our hero Holly Martins of the full extent of Harry Lime’s penicillin racket. The dentist’s vaguely terrifying conclusion could be summed up as follows:
‘If you don’t give me £2,000 immediately, all your teeth are going to fall out.’
In a peroration which I suspected he’d given many times, he explained that people live for longer these days. Teeth would not last a lifetime unless given considerable help. He said the disease affecting my gums would mean they would gradually loosen their grip on my teeth, and out they would fall. Cue images of myself as a toothless old man. It was all right to be a toothless old man on the wilds of Exmoor, where a gappy grin could be charming, worn while its wearer leans on a five-bar gate. In vain London, it would not do at all.
The dentist told me he wouldn’t treat my case, such was its enormity. I would have to be treated by a more specialised dentist – a periodontist. This person would anaesthetise my head, burrow deep under the teeth and clean out the horrors that lurked there. The process would take some months.
I agreed. I’d been hoping to get that new suit – but I called my tailor to say that we must delay.
The first step was a visit to the hygienist to prepare my teeth for the periodontist. Two months later, I found myself in the fabled periodontist’s chair. She swabbed my mouth with some sort of numbing solution and injected my gums with huge quantities of anaesthetic. Her assistant stood by with a water-sucking device. The hour that followed was not my most pleasant. I experimented with yogi breathing exercises to calm myself down. Occasionally I raised my left hand, as instructed, in order to sit up and choke. I congratulated myself on my stoicism.
‘You’re doing very well,’ she said kindly, detecting that I was anxious to receive some acknowledgement of my heroically calm demeanour.
I staggered out of her office and managed to hand over a few hundred pounds to the receptionist, even though I could hardly talk as my face was so numb. I trudged home with swollen lips and aching gums, feeling as if I’d been beaten up.
I bumped into a neighbour and explained that, in a subtle form of scientific gangsterism, I’d been told to give the dentist £2,000 or my teeth would fall out.
‘The same thing happened to me,’ she said. ‘And I think they gave me too much anaesthetic. It seemed to affect my entire body, not just my teeth.’
She was right. I went home and curled up on the sofa. During supper, my children said I was talking nonsense and behaving weirdly. Clearly the painkillers injected into my head had been very strong indeed.
Before long, the anaesthetic wore off, leaving me with an aching mouth. And that’s not the end – the periodontist treated only the right side of my mouth. The left side will be treated later.
I can look forward to more agony and suffering. But I will look good – and that’s all that matters.
‘ It was all right to be a toothless old man in Exmoor, but not in vain London’