As if I needed another sign of the gathering momentum with which my fourth dacade aproaches, tooth decay has launched an assault on my mouth.

I sit here drooling over the keyboard and I wish it was because of the memories of flirtacious looks from a glamourous dentist’s assistant or even less realistically a refund off the dentist on account of my gnashers being so perfect and therefore some sort of reward was due their careful owner but no. I drool because the side of my head feels as if it’s melted.

The dentist asked if my bottom lip and the side of my tongue felt numb, this after he had speared my gum with a syringe of cartoon like proportions full of anaesthetic – at the time nothing felt numb. He made me contort my face into Maori style Hakka poses and then began the ‘probe’. (I’m convinced all the claims by alien abductees are really half remembered dentists chair episodes from their childhood that they’ve repressed, which have later resurfaced as Sunday Sport articles.)

In case you missed it I said, “at the time nothing felt numb”. Images of Bond villains kept running through my mind as I squirmed under the dentist’s deceptively strong vice-like grip on my head,
“Do you expect me to talk, Coldfinger?”
“No Mr Bongo, I expect you to die”
went the imaginary exchange.

I was informed, in a manner that clearly suggested that I should be ecstatic about the news, that I qualified for a cosmetically enhanced white filling at NHS prices and not cheap metal ones. Since you’ll remember, “at the time nothing felt numb”, and the dentist, his glamourous assistant and assorted sharp implements had encamped themselves in my mouth I wasn’t in the mood to disagree but I recognised a leveraged pitch when I heard one.

I somehow, heroically, survived the ordeal with out crying hardly at all. On the plus side the anaesthetic has finally kicked in and currently everything feels numb. Now you’ll have to excuse me while I go and empty my gob.