It’s difficult to write every day – as you can tell, because there aren’t entries every day.  I do try to write, following L’s advice, but much of the output is fairly banal and not worth posting.  I find myself trying to think of things to write about knowing, as I do, that the blogs that I like have regular posts, giving me a story that’s more interesting to read, that I want to follow.  For example, Wandering Scribe, now that her situation has changed, has stopped posting so often and, in turn, I’ve stopped looking so often, whereas, Italy is Falling, The Magistrate and My Boyfriend Is ….., post regularly, so I look at their blogs every day.

And now, as things happen during the day, I find myself thinking – “Is this bloggable?” or “Can I make this interesting?”

Well, this entry is not a particular thing that happened in a day, it’s just a general ramble and it’s all to do with teeth, as you would expect from the title.

It would seem to me that, in the UK, people of may age must be suffering right now with very bad teeth.  My reasoning is that mine are bad.  But mine cannot be as bad as some.  I remember when I was at school and one of my best friends, M L, and I were at his house for some reason, watching cricket on the TV.

I was intrigued as to why his teeth (or the top, near the gums) were green!

Yes, they were, really (sorry M, if you ever get to read this).  His reply, when questioned, was ‘I fell over on the grass and it stained them’.

Unfortunately, at that moment, his Mum walked through the door and overheard it.  She retorted that it wasn’t anything to with that, it was the fact that he didn’t clean them.

Another instance, when I was about 12, was some friends of my parents who lived in Wolverhampton – I forget their names.  They had 3 kids about our age (me and my sister that is).  We went to their place one day.  It was probably Sunday.  After lunch we heard the ice cream van outside and we were all given money to go and get ice creams.  Well, at least one of the girls (but I think both of them and, maybe, the boy) started to eat their ice creams and then the most extraordinary thing happened.  Their mouths were bleeding.  It gave the ice creams a sort of raspberry ripple effect.

Their mother fussed over them, of course, and explained that their gums bled when they ate cold things.

Of course, in those days, no one spoke of gum disease.

I also remember my Auntie Joan.  Sometime after she reached 40, she had dentures fitted.  It was explained to us, by our mother, that her teeth had been hurting so much that she decided to have them all taken out!  We were amazed.  Why on earth would someone just have ALL their teeth taken out?  Why not just the one (or two) that hurt?

And then there was my grandmother.  She did have her own teeth (well most of them at least).  But I remember when they got a rat in the hot water tank.  Unfortunately, the rat drowned.  Not that I’m a big fan of rats you understand.  It’s just that we were told that the reason they found it was that the hot water ‘tasted funny for some time’ and so my grandfather (Bampa) went to have a look.  And why did they know that the hot water tasted funny – because, we learnt for the first time, Nana used to clean her teeth in warm water from the hot tap!

Ah, but now I understand my Auntie Joan and my Nan.  I, too, am suffering from sensitive teeth.  And now I know why.  It’s because for all these years I haven’t been cleaning them properly.  I wish it had been properly explained why Auntie Joan’s teeth had hurt so much and why Nana cleaned her teeth in warm water.  If only someone had said “Look, if you don’t clean your teeth at least twice a day and, preferably after every meal, using this method, you will have gum disease and, one day, when you are not so old, you may have to have all your teeth removed.”  I wish my parents had been more exacting.  Didn’t they realise when my mother took me to the dentist and I had to have so many fillings, that the trouble was not then, but now?

So now I’m in a situation where I’m trying not to let them get worse. ‘ Where I find myself staring at people’s teeth – spotting the ones that have the same or similar problems and being envious of those people with perfect pearly whites (which, in Italy is most people), looking for the gums that come all the way down and keep the teeth together, without huge gaps that you could drive a bus through.

I want to say something to A, the closest thing that I will ever have to a child, but will she listen anyway?  Would I have listened if I had been told?  I’m sure my parents told me to brush them more often than I did but maybe a horror story would have helped?  Who knows?  I just wish it had been tried or, maybe, no one knew?