SOME SPECULATION ABOUT THE ART AND HISTORY OF DENTISTRY

"Someone's taking the mick."

I went to the dentist today. Or rather, I should say, I went to see the dental hygienist. As I was lying under the interrogation lamp, trying to ignore the terrible sounds scraping through my skull, I was wondering at what point in the history of medicine, dentistry branched off and became a separate thing altogether. I would have asked but it was impossible at the time.

I have my suspicions. I think it might have evolved from the practice of barbaric medieval torturing monks, trying to extract valuable information from heretics and dissenters. Oh, it's all there - the shiny rack of hooked implements with sharp, curly points, the odd machinery and the pious instruction to keep a sanctified mouth; not to mention the extortion of your hard-earned coins for the privilege.

It's OK. My dental hygienist is my sister (not the one I don't text). You might think this is a bit weird, but it's surprisingly OK. Incidentally, she is a fully qualified hygienist in a proper surgery; we haven't just rigged up some kind of makeshift dentist's chair out of old boxes and mirrors in the garage. It has pictures on the wall and everything.

Yes, that reminds me. The pictures. Maybe I'm reading too much into the smartly framed photographs at my local dental surgery, but I think someone's taking the mick. As the chair whirred me upright I noticed a lovely picture of Stonehenge. And why not? Our nation's finest example of prehistoric monumentia, a neolithic reminder of the constancy and legacy of human endeavour, of our inescapable desire for something greater as we seek to glimpse the sunrise between the stones and the stars.

Or... a giant row of wobbly teeth.

I couldn't help noticing downstairs too, in the waiting room, that they'd gone for monochrome pictures of vast, gaping halls, stretching back into the darkness, into vacuous chasms of blackness, tunneling backwards from the foreground of marble-white pillars and arches: actual cavities.

The hygienist gave me a little plastic cup with some green minty liquid swirling around in it. I rinsed and handed it back to her.

"Right," she said. "Time for the Cavitron."

"Is that the thing that tastes of oranges?"

"Nope. This is the thing that's a lot of noise and a lot of water."

"Oh," I said cheekily, "Just like Alton Towers."

It wasn't.