Three weeks ago I had a tooth out. It did not go quietly. The extraction took forty-five minutes, with the dentist braced against the chair like a man trying to start a lawnmower, and yet the forty-five minutes were not the worst part. The week before was.
It was a week of throbbing, of chewing exclusively on the left, of paracetamol and ibuprofen in strict rotation, and of lying awake at three in the morning negotiating with my own jaw. By the time I was in the chair, mouth propped open like a pelican, he could have taken the whole top row and I’d have thanked him for the relief.
That waiting room is where British business has been sitting since the summer. The appointment is 28 October. The new man in the white coat is John Healey, and nobody quite knows what kind of dentist he is.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
