There I was in Kinsale with my tapas and Thaijito when it landed on the tip of my tongue. It was a porcelain veneer, totally intact, which had been stuck to one of my front teeth for longer than I care to remember.
All I can say is that I was enjoying the benefit of the particular establishment’s rum-fuelled signature cocktail coursing through my veins, so I discreetly slipped this sliver of my former smile into a small pocket in my handbag and continued to pontificate about world politics.
I was in the company of my three daughters and we had earlier attended a lunchtime event at the annual Words by the Water festival.
It was an interview by Mary Wilson, formerly of RTÉ, with Lara Marlowe, of this parish, about her life’s work in war-torn countries.
Losing my veneer and our long obsession with the perfect smile
Irish corner: Oliver O’Hanlon on the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco
An officer and a Dublin man: Frank McNally on ‘perhaps the most brilliant general in British history’
Forever Auvers – Frank McNally on the village where Vincent van Gogh spent his last days
With the tumultuous state of global affairs, I knew there was no justification for making a big deal about suddenly looking like Nanny McPhee, when Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were still in power and the only hope was the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections.
After all, I wasn’t planning on becoming a contestant on Love Island any time in the future or, indeed, offering myself up to a toothpaste conglomerate to enhance the sales of their whitening products.
However, an invitation to breakfast, in the cold and sober light of the following morning, left me standing in front of the bathroom mirror practising my closed lips smile. It wasn’t the first time.
You see, many, many years ago, when I was in high infants in the convent school in Tullamore, I tripped over my school case and broke my front teeth. Lying face down on the path in Puttaghaun, there was a lot of blood and wailing. My poor mother was distraught. I had lovely front teeth, apparently.
It was the beginning of many terrifying pilgrimages on the 25 and 26 buses to an array of dentists from Chapelizod to Lucan after we moved to the big shmoke some years later. These swollen lips and numbed gums resulted in my lifelong interest in how the history of our human gnashers has culminated in a contemporary culture demanding we flash pearly whites that are structured like the ivories on a piano.
[ Fake smiles and false teeth: a history of dental painOpens in new window ]
Apparently, it all began in ancient Egypt when those who wanted winning smiles would mix a ground pumice stone, wine vinegar and oxen hooves into a paste to clean their teeth. Seemingly, it wasn’t great for the enamel.
Across the Mediterranean, in Rome, human and animal urine was used as a mouthwash, as the ammonia present in the urine helped to bleach the teeth. However, it is a relief to confirm that during medieval times a more civilised mixture of sage and salt was used.
Of course, that was for those who still had teeth.
As far back as 700BC, the Etruscans of Italy used to carve false teeth from oxen bones and bind them together with gold wire. Fast-forward a few centuries and it was your local barber who extracted those rotting molars with a pliers.
Indeed, it wasn’t until the 1700s that dental care became a profession and, moreover, the first mass-produced toothbrushes were manufactured courtesy of an English entrepreneur called William Addis.
His eureka moment came while incarcerated in Highgate prison for starting a riot in 1700. After watching the back and forth process of a floor being swept by broom, he saved a small animal bone from his dinner, drilled holes in it and after obtaining some boar bristles from a guard, he tied them in tufts, slid them through the holes and glued them in place. Ingenious.
Then, a century later, Colgate began producing aromatic toothpaste in jars.
It was this sweep through history that once again crossed through my mind as I sat in the waiting room having inveigled my dentist into an emergency appointment when back home in Westport the following week.
This was a crisis of immeasurable importance, from my perspective. I was attending my dear friend Mary’s youngest daughter’s wedding that weekend and planned on impressing the Gen Zs with some cool moves on the dance floor. Looking like the Hag of Beara was not an option, neither was me staying shtum for two days.
So Dr Rosemary and her masked team of experts pulled out all the stops for me and, in her own words, “threw the kitchen sink” at the reattachment of my errant porcelain veneer.
Ultimately, I was glad I hadn’t resorted to a measure taken by my ex who, as an offshore island resident, doesn’t have the same access to dentists. During bad winter weather a couple of years back he used super glue to stick a tooth back into his mouth.
