Bonding and Restoration

He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. He looked deep into my eyes and said, trust me – I know what I’m doing. His hands were gentle and skillful as he moved with purposeful intent. I lay back, closed my eyes, inhaled deeply and did not think of England. Oh! I said, and ah!

I am talking dentistry. I am talking restoration of chipped front teeth, and the new method of slapping on some bonding material over the originals to make them look even again. I am talking a lot of money but not as much as if I’d gone all the way and had proper “porcelains” done in the laboratory. To be honest, I did not care overly about the appearance of my front teeth, they were wonky but had been like that for so long that it was just one of those things – how I looked, and I’m English, for goodness sake, everyone knows about our teeth and orthodontics, or lack of. But my dentist maintained that this was not merely a cosmetic exercise for I was grinding them down (when? In my sleep?) to the point where my Bite (he has a thing about this) would be affected, and if your Bite is affected then all hell is let loose in the form of migraines, mandibular dysfunction, postural misalignments and I don’t know what, and my dentist is one of those who doesn’t let an idea drop. And I am dependent on him because of the precarious state of my back teeth, those that are left and have not gone the way of tooth fairy, and no other dentist will touch me with a barge pole, and those that do wear cowboy hats and do terrible things with ghastly consequences. So this one is my Main Man and in the end I do what he says, or at least enough of what he says to keep his good will. We need a few Sessions, he says, to get it right. Relax - you’ll thank me for it in the end, they all do. It’s as close to a Mills and Boon romance as I will ever get, so I should try to enjoy it, and even as I say this, my face is covered with a delicate dusting of grainy powder from the fine polishing after another Bonding session.

Tomorrow Mr. Signs and I go to the BBC Centre in White City to watch some of the finals of Last Choir Standing, in which Son of Signs will be singing with Last Minute, the group that was formed for this purpose. It won’t be shown until Saturday 26th July when there will also be some footage of him and the other lads in Oxford, acting Naturally. There will be five groups and we will apparently be in the studio for six hours. I can’t quite get my head around how I will cope with this, but Mr. Signs will be driving us, and I will be bringing my friend, co-proxamol.

Daughter of Signs has got an upper second for her degree in Performance Arts and is off to Edinburgh next week to prepare for the putting on of her show (of which more anon) for her fringe festival show.

Life, being what it is, nothing is ever as straightforwardly easy as it looks but with both kids working flat out at several projects, I cannot help but ask myself again: where did we go right?