Never laugh at sneezing teeth, I don't

LIFE, as they say, comes full circle. It goes past pretty quickly, too. So, if you're a forty-something it's probably better to switch off now. Unless, that is, you want to share the misery.

Where to begin? Well, 20 years ago in a pub of dubious reputation in Middlesbrough. A group of young blades roughing it up.

There's an old boy in the corner, flat cap and whippet and a very heavy cold. The cold's making him sneeze a lot. As he sneezes his flat cap falls down over his face, much to the amusement of everyone in the bar under the age of 21 (for whom flat caps are ridiculous anyway).

Things get even better. The old boy's sneezing reaches a crescendo. Three mighty blasts. With the last one, so violent a seizure that it jerks his head forward with a crack, the unfortunate fellow's false teeth come flying out. They are propelled across the room and lie chattering under a table.

The old boy scrabbles for them.

They are kicked away from his reach. With the room in uproar, the poor old sneezer is on hands and knees chasing his teeth across the floor as they are booted from table to table.

The mirth reaches fever pitch when the landlord catches the teeth and, with the creativity of the born entreprenuer, employs them as a makeshift doorstop.

The old guy finally rescues them. Inspects them. Dips them in his beer... and pops them back in.

This was one of the stories recounted lately when the same group of blades, now much dulled by the years, were reliving their youth while enjoying a night out on the Micklegate run (more of a crawl, actually).

Dressed up in a middle-aged version of street fashion (no-one tucked in their shirts) they eyed the young girls in their designer lack of clothing, rolled around the disco bars and quaffed copious amounts of imported foreign lager.

Until about ten o'clock that is. Then one of the group admitted they were tired. Another that he was fed up shouting above the music. Another still that he had a daughter older than some of the girls they were looking at.

There was a moment of wordless consultation. Then the group retired to the back bar of an old codger's pub where the only noise came from the rattle of the dominoes.

The imported lager went west, Proper beer went south, from mouth to stomach. Someone bought a round of pork scratchings. This was more like it. Until there was a loud crack. Pork scratching met middle-aged, crowned, tooth. The tooth lost. The crown fell out and plopped gently, with a little ripple, into a conveniently situated pint pot. The victim sat aghast.

But the expected ridicule did not arrive. Instead there was the murmured concern of fellow sufferers. Followed by conversation on the sadnesses of descent into middle age. The wobbly teeth, the tufts of hair in the plug hole of the shower, the turning of muscle to flab.

The fact that some of us have bigger breasts than Kate Moss.

How much longer, we wondered, before we, too, were sneezing out our false teeth?

"Not long," the dentist confirmed, when consulted the next day. "About ten years if you don't stop smoking." To rub in this sorry state of affairs the dentist, of course, was young and fit and plays football for Haxby Town.

For someone who has yet to survive 90 minutes for Dunnington over-35s this season, such physical perfection could only add insult to injury.

There followed a hasty exit from the surgery, the sounds of imagined laughter ringing in the air.

So hasty a departure, in fact, we forgot our flat cap.

Well, you have to have something to keep a balding head warm...

02/12/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.