Saturday 20th October

I no longer believe in the tooth fairy, you know the one that takes your milk teeth away and leaves a sixpence under your pillow.  But, oh, if it were still true I would be richer today, but only by 2.5p in today’s devalued currency.  I had a tooth extracted on Thursday.  It is quite a long saga.  For years I was seen by Bernard Chan the polite Chinese butcher, sorry – I mean dentist, who was quite happy to keep filling and plugging the gaps in my teeth, brought on by years of neglect no doubt.  One day at my regular check-up Mr. Chan was gone, replaced by the charming Romanian Ilya Sapori, who said I should really consider getting all my bad teeth either replaced by implants or by bridges and crowns.  On the grounds of expense, though the crowns weren’t exactly cheap I opted for the latter and had about six crowns inserted in my mouth.  Along with whitening it certainly made a big difference and at last I had a passably respectable set of teeth.

That was two years ago.  At my last check-up I was recommended to see the hygienist who spotted a large cavity under a crown.  I was referred back to Ilya, who incidentally had not spotted the bad tooth two weeks ago.  He half talked me into having an implant and I returned to have the tooth extracted by a Dental Surgeon, who on examining the x-rays thought I should also have an adjacent wisdom tooth (still hidden in my gums) removed at the same time, to allow more room to do the implant.  At this point I started to have real second doubts, especially as they said that I should have a few days off work to get over the removal of the wisdom tooth.  I decided to just have the bad tooth removed which reluctantly they did, warning me that I may still have to have the wisdom tooth removed in three months time if I still wanted the implant.  No fear of that I can assure you.  I will not be having the implant done.  I will put up with one less tooth in my head for the remainder of my days; it is right at the back anyway so no-one will notice.

It makes me realise that the tooth fairy has been replaced by the tooth alchemist, who wants to turn all my teeth into gold, because at £1500 a time, implants are the game to be in.  Why it’s almost as lucrative as Banking.