Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which, when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rosebuds fill’d with snow.
An Howre’s Recreation in Musike, 1606
For more than a week now, while most of my bottom teeth are with a dental technician, somewhere on the South Coast, I have been walking around with just five front teeth and a very visible gap*. Who, when they were young, could imagine a time when they would be putting their teeth to bed in a glass of water every night and sticking them in with glue every morning? Or that they could appear in public, as I have been doing, gap-toothed and lisping.
There is nothing to prepare one for Old Age. But at least my generation – the vermin who are destroying the world is how my friend, M, describes us – have an old age. And the physical discomforts that go with it prove a distraction – although not as agreeable a distraction as ‘Spiral’ or ‘MasterChef’ – from what is going on all around us.
One of our main preoccupations, as the young will learn for themselves one day, is how not to fall over. With age, something happens to one’s sense of balance, and the time when one could fall flat on one’s face, get up and carry on, is long over.
My friend Judy knew what to do without needing to be told. Having started life as a dancer, she understood about balance and used the three long flights of stairs to her East Village home as her exercise ground. Climbing them without using the banister for support, she remained steady on her feet well into her nineties.
For the rest of us, there are Fall Clinics and exercise classes where you learn how to use a wobble machine and to walk in a straight line with your eyes shut, and you are advised not to stand on one leg when gardening. A crushed plant will recover faster than you will.
But back to teeth which are my current preoccupation, even as I hear yet another outrageous lie from the Boris camp, followed by the news that the bubbling stream which made the visit to Fishlake parish church so memorable, has drowned the pretty little village.
With no back teeth, I eat like a rabbit. To my surprise, I learn rabbits do have back teeth. They are called ‘cheek teeth’. But it seems that they prefer not to use them.
Be that as it may, both the rabbits and I are better off than the convicts, unforgettably portrayed in a brilliant documentary about a prison for Russian non-political prisoners. With no access to dentists in the Siberian backlands, the burly inmates – murderers and the like – have barely a tooth among them. But they are not wasting away. So, it seems that gums harden and provide a substitute able to cope with a diet that consists mostly of stale Russian bread.
As for me, I am waiting for the phone call to tell me my teeth are ready to be collected, and I will soon be able to recall visiting the Wellcome Trust’s enjoyable ‘Teeth’ exhibition – visited before I became a potential exhibit myself – without a shudder of recognition.
*My excellent NHS dentist believes in make do and mend.