Your teeth are like stars…

…they come out at night, har har.

I thought it might be fun to have a whole bunch of teeth out on Tuesday, and the good people at the Dental Access Centre in Hereford agreed with me, so that’s what we did.

They’d promised me intra-venous valium; promised me, they had. It was the one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy prospect. But you have to be escorted all day, and that wasn’t possible for me, so they gave me gas and air instead, telling me it’s what they give women when they’re having babies. Girls, no wonder you yell.  Gas and air sucks. Clearly, the young people get off on it, to judge from the amount of empty NOx cannisters you see lying around at festivals these days, but I don’t really get it. Back in the day, I had NOx at the dentists in Brighton, and it made me grin and dribble. I distinctly heard the dentist say to his nurse, this guy’s a wanker, and I just laughed and nodded. At the time, dosed up on laughing gas, it seemed like the funniest thing I’d ever heard, though I’ve become a little more resentful over the years.

The intravenous valium would have helped me sleep like a baby for the rest of the day; gas and air just made me sulky.  Just why is valium so hard to come by? Yes, I know it’s highly addictive and all that, but experienced recreational drug users could surely be trusted with just a little tub by the bed for those occasional bouts of sleeplessness? Once, gripped by the horrors of anxiety induced insomnia, I persuaded my GP to prescribe me temazepam, and that worked a treat, but you can’t beat the odd valium tab to get you off to the land of nod with a smile on your face.

My pal Big Doctor Dave, an ex-biker with a suspect fondness for ‘classic rock‘ was appalled that I took mazzies at night to help me sleep.

‘That’s not how you take downers,’  he said.

‘How do you take downers, then?’ I asked.

‘You take them when you get up in the morning,’ he said. ‘And then go and have a few beers.’

In my view, this only serves to illustrate the difference between mods and rockers; mods took purple hearts etc. so they could dance all night; rockers took downers and beer so they could sit about dribbling and moaning on about camshafts, whilst listening to Zep, Purp, Heep etc. Still, I suppose it made them easier to fight with…