“Hell’s teeth!” Chris thought as he saw the little dog scamper under the table.

(Or perhaps he thought “Les dents de l’enfer!” because we were in Brittany, although I doubt that Chris is good enough at French to think of such expressions in that language.)

The incident happened a couple of years ago when we were staying with my brother-in-law Glynn and his wife Roly, and we were visiting some good friends of theirs from down the road. In hospitable fashion the friends had brought out a loaf of bread, various cheeses and some meat pâtés to accompany the wines. Unfortunately, the bread, which looked very wholesome and seedy, was, as it transpired, rather old and tough, and too hard for the delicate dentistry practiced in dear old England. This, we discovered only after taking out first bites (after which I quickly developed a nibbling and sucking technique); alas, Chris had already fallen foul of the devilish bread, which, in something of a “tug’o’war”, would not tear without taking one of Chris’s crowns with it. This I didn’t realise until a short time after I saw the little French dog run under the table and Chris shooing away the insistent dog away from his foot…

Having bent down to retrieve something from under his shoe, Chris caught my eye and revealed an incomplete set of teeth in his flashing smile; surreptitiously, he pointed at the disappointed dog and opened his palm to show me a crown, now all the more treasured because he had come so close to losing it to a hungry canine. Not that the dog was particularly partial to eating teeth, surely, he must have thought the crown was one of the large seeds in tough old bread to which he had become accustomed. And while all this was happening the group of delightful French folk chatted and laughed, and no doubt threw hard crusts of old seedy bread under the table. They may well have wondered why the dog was more interested in Chris’s shoe… for Chris didn’t tell the party about his little problem. Luckily English people have stiff upper lips, which come in handy when you’re trying to hide your missing crown!

Recently I have had cause to be reminded about Chris and his close shave. One morning at my brother Henry’s place I took my first bite of what I considered to be an innocent bowl of puffed wheat cereal when I felt something odd – a small movement in my mouth – and I soon realised that my new veneer had dislodged. Even smaller than a grain of puffed wheat,  the veneer rested atop a pink table-mat on Henry’s table cloth until I could think of a safe place to put it (and meanwhile I did the housework).

The top of the table was as shiny and clean as the the wooden floor when I suddenly thought of my veneer. Panic! All mats and table-cloth put away, surfaces done and dusted and no sign of anything remotely like a tooth. I put on my glasses and went down to floor level to search with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing. What did I do with the table-mat? At last, after much “chomping at the bit”, I decided to check the rubbish bag (only newly changed that morning)…

“Hell’s teeth!” I said to myself (with a slight Australian inflection because I’m in Australia) as I recovered the veneer looking like a piece of discarded puffed wheat. I daresay I was smiling to myself  with relief – no need for any stiff upper lip, I was on my own (and it’s not a front tooth!).