012: Open wide, we're not in England anymore
POV: You're staring at my teeth
He angled my head, mouth agape, toward a handheld mirror. Be-gloved and masked-up with tools deep in teeth he gestures towards a visible cavity in the upper right conclave of my gob. “See there?” he says. I do see there. It’s a surprise - a small, painless, and mucky-coloured shade of decay reaching surreptitiously out of a molar. I try to respond as is expected; “oh no!” I exclaim. It comes out muffled and tastes metallic. With tongue unable to hit palate it escapes as a tangled moan. “Ouwgh nauogh!”.
There’s something quite humbling about receiving dental treatment in the front room of a semi-detached house now turned clinic in the middle of suburbia. After much tribulation I landed an NHS appointment in just this kind of establishment, only to then be told that under the NHS pricing I am only entitled to a mouth full of metal fillings if I don’t want to cough up the hefty private price for a pearly white composite cap. Dear reader — I have cared for my pegs like no other. I diligently brush twice daily, I swill water as instructed, and floss (albeit infrequently) with great attention to detail, but the gnashers lodged in my gums are determined to veer clear of care-free veneers. I feel I am owed a set of intact white teeth. But perhaps my fate has been sealed with Sensodyne.
“Be careful what you drink, dear”, he says as we close our appointment, him blithely adjusting the contrast on an x-ray of my teeth, me being mechanically reanimated by a dental chair rising slowly on its hinge. “Have a think on the white caps”.
A short week on from lying horizontal in Dr Ahman’s chair and I found myself on a wholly different reclining seat, flying into Rijeka airport on the north western part of the island of Krk, Croatia.
The long-held tradition of consuming drinks in good company takes a myriad of different guises, but these seven days in Krk revolved around that self-same act of sipping, downing, and drinking with others. In short — we were socialising abroad.
Our drinking habits were largely routined and card-game adjacent, often beach-side or on-balcony, with warm cans passing between hands en route to elsewhere. As a non drinker I stuck to the 0%-ers — alcohol FREE beers and ice cold bottled BFF coke zeros were on rotation, punctuated by a singular €4 lavender and blueberry kombucha made by a woman called Isa. They clearly knew the pretentious teetotal-ers were coming to Krk, and god knows I was grateful.
Without our Croatian advocates to guide us, ordering a “little” beer (pivo) was often misheard as a “litre” beer, whilst a “big” beer actually accounts for just half that measure. The confusion led to little consternation, as more beer is often better than less beer, but as I sipped and savoured the sweet, sugary nectar of holiday alco-free alternatives, I couldn’t help but ruminate on what I’m pickling my teeth with.
Tooth be told, I did little to mitigate the risks. I sunk into the dreamy sugar-scape of Croatia with little resistance, ordering exactly what I desired without concern for the cavity sitting squarely in my mouth. And no shortage of bevs were consumed in this scorching corner of the Adriatic, with a number of the party rather partial to šlagom, a delightful Croatian coffee served with cream a-top, the perfect interruption between generous scoops of Jimmy’s sladoled (ice cream) and freezer-cold glasses of Ožujsko Cool 0% beer. I didn’t care! I still don’t care. Holiday is for indulging in a week-long moment. I’ll deal with my tooths later.
No woman is a sobriety island, and whilst the shore is bone dry and the message-in-glass bottle goddamn empty, I found a real solace in “drinking” “drinks” as someone who doesn’t “drink”. My going out-out stamina wained on more than one occasion — how can I possibly compete with the zero-to-sixty diesel of a drink-drink? But I soon discovered that “drinking” is more than just cracking open an alco-cool one with the dudes. Drinks are plural and plentiful, and, tooth be told, mine will always close with a camomile tea and a rigorous tooth scrub.
Love this. Witty, great writing.
Looking for tooth in a world of lies? Read DISCONTENTED