Biting Recession - Friday

All the Polish builders might have headed home but at least the NHS dentist is still here. The quote for private tooth care left me grinding molars more than ever, so I queued along with the others to stay on the list. A list that’s going to disappear into the ether when the next failed IT upgrade sends several million names and addresses to a Russian hacker with halitosis and a bedsit in Omsk.

‘Off to the dentist.’ I tell negotiator S with a half-smile, not wishing to over-expose the yellowing incisors too much.
‘Just a check-up?’ She asks guilelessly. No, a painful hygienist scraping followed by another filling as it happens. Not sure what is worse - the mental or physical decay.

‘Probably.’ I hedge, with the sort of obfuscation that gets me through the day when buyers ask about structural integrity and sellers plead for reassurance we’ll get the price they want.

S smiles sweetly and dips her head back to a dwindling pile of sales in progress files. There’s little artificial about her, teeth or tits, and although I sometimes dream of biting off more than I can chew, while it remains platonic, it helps me get through the day.

‘Name please?’ Asks the heavily accented receptionist sporting the sort of gnashers that must have all the patients paying extra for those little long-reach brushes and the interdentine harps that just leave me spitting blood a little more than usual.

The woman is another face I don’t recognise so I’m hoping the Gdansk girl is still in the surgery waiting for me. They now have a television mounted in one corner of the waiting room running asinine advert loops for local businesses, at least one of which has gone bust. As the pile of yellowing magazines look about as enticing as lettings tramp B in a bar, I gaze vacantly at the screen.

Then my name is called and as I exit, a man who has been eyeing me with a cross between suspicion and derision nods as I pass.
‘The estate agent right?’
I mumble an affirmative, as he says louder than required.
‘Yeh thought I recognised you. You gazumped me two years ago.’

I’m tempted to spin on my heel and explain agents don’t gazump, the public do – or at least did – but I’m in too much pain. A chunk of bran fake is lodged in the hole, left over from breakfast despite copious scrubbing, plus I can feel the antipathy in the room full of miscreants behind me.

‘How are you?’ Asks the dentist with an unconvincing attempt at recognition. But she surprises me by remembering my profession as I lie back in the chair and her latest assistant, a rather horny looking eastern European in a swishy nylon coat, puts a bib on me and hands over a pair of comedy sunglasses.

Perhaps it’s me, but I seem to have a diminishing tolerance to dental treatment. I’ve wondered in idle moments if there’s some sort of toxic amalgam build up happening in my body. It could explain my poisonous mood every Friday when the sales stats have to be transmitted. More likely, it’s the fear of the known and a burgeoning post-traumatic shock syndrome, leaving me more and more jittery with each new excavation.

‘How’s the property market?’ Asks the dentist when I’m tilted back and exposed, with a cotton wool wodge in the gum and a metal probe hovering. I’m not best placed to answer, so I fudge a neutral reply, thinking she’ll blame the incomprehensible reply on her colleague wielding the plastic spit removal tube.

‘Are you numb yet?’ Questions the dentist, drill poised menacingly. God yes, I want to answer, but I just nod and look at the postcards of Warsaw pinned incongruously to the ceiling tiles.

And now I have a shivery ghost-over-grave moment, as I begin to drown in my own phlegm, trying desperately to breath and keep my mouth open. I’m imagining an early booking for the Swiss exit flat, until the dentist revives me instantly by instructing her comely assistant to: ‘Give him more suction.’

The price came as a bit of a blow.