How Saturday morning people with broken teeth eat cornflakes

Saturday mornings and I parted company some time in my teens and early twenties when their only purpose was to give me an opportunity to stay in bed until someone put on a frying pan and lured me out of the scratcher.

Now I find I appreciate them again, since I got some of my own life back. In fact, I've swung to the other extreme and find I can't stay in bed on Saturday morning. My head gets filled up with a week's worth of corporate crap and office politics that clenches the muscles of my lower back into a biological alarmclock. This morning I was sitting in front of this thing around 8.00am, for example.

It confused the hell out of me to hear the front door opening at 8.30am. Brig arriving back with the week's grocery shopping. I was up so early that I wasn't expecting to see her until after her half-day's work ended at 12.30pm. So I tripped on out in carpet slippers and piled in bags of cat litter and potatoes into the kitchen, then sent her on her way to make money for me to buy beer. I'm good and white trash and proud. Even down to the teeth.

It isn't that I didn't try to get the dentist to yank out the broken ones. He just didn't see the value in staying put in one place long enough to do the job. Anyway, he looked about 12 years old.

I made three appointments and was seen once. After that I said 'Fuck it' and kept taking the Neuorfen until the most awkward part finally fell out of its own accord. So now I'm eating cornflakes like a dog tossing back a particularly noisesome piece of offal before the universe knows he's found it. Head back and using up the unbroken teeth as best I can.

My first appintment the child genius told me I could have root-canal treatment for €700 a tooth or have the two most troublesome ones yanked for €200. What's a skinflint to do? So I dutifully paid €250 for this news and arrived the following week to notice first of all that his tricycle wasn't padlocked to the gate as it had been on my first visit and that no lights were on inside the surgery. I took the fact that no-one answered the doorbell, the pounding on the door, or the screaming through the letterbox as a sign that perhaps nobody was in. The itsy-bitsy-ditsy receptionist had forgotten to phone me to cancel my appointment, it transpired. Old Short-Pants and Pimples had a meeting of his own someplace else.

So... The next day, holding my temper and ignoring the throb in my left eye (I have very long dental roots), I phoned and politely asked if perhaps they might crayon me in for another date with the pliers. When my mobile tinkled a few days later to cancel this appointment, I decided their hearts really weren't in it.

In any case, a cup of hot soup followed by an ice-cream did more to quarry the offending gnasher than the boyish man could have done with his three days of training under his belt.

So I have sharks teeth in places. But hey! I'm happy. Can't you tell I'm happy?