Return once more to the pink lozenge

Eight fifteen this morning and I struggle into the dentist coping manfully with my awful dosage of man-flu, nose and eyes running, chest aching with the exertion of coughing and sneezing so much, I should be in bed not making the final installation visit for my new tooth.

Its a new crown, a complete new porcelain tooth, upper left incisor, the old one fell out when the root broke last year and I've been making fortnightly visits to my dentist since christmas while he fills the old root, then finds a new root that was infected, clears the infection then fills that root too and now today, finally, after three months, I am ready for the fitting of the new tooth.

If I can stop coughing long enough.

Its a two hour appointment because he makes the carbon fibre post and porcelain tooth there on the premises as you wait, the clever bugger, and he drills around for a bit and carves some of my gum away to make a nice base for the new tooth and then send me to wait in his ultra modern waiting room to watch Fawlty Towers while he gets the Chad Valley Porcelain Tooth Makers kit out and does his funky stuff with his little kiln and all.

I'll say this about him - he's a bloody good dentist, not cheap, but bloody good, and in my book you can't have a dentist who is bloody good and cheap as well.

I've got his surgery all to myself for the whole two hours so I put my feet up and watch a whole episode of John Cleese's masterpiece which isn't as funny as I remember it being twenty years ago, and I'm invited back to the big pink lozenge of a chair while he fits the new incisor and takes photos on a very snazzy video screen, probably to show off to his dentist mates down their dentists pub tonight.

£520 is the bill and £275 in other appointments before it, £795 for my new tooth, like I said, not bloody cheap but it could have been more than that, he started quoting £3500 for an implant and other silly numbers, I'm not sure at which point we got down to £525 plus fitting for a new crown but we did and I suppose someone has to pay for the refit he had six months ago and the exclusivity of having a dentist and two assistants to yourself for two hours on a Monday morning.

But what did happen to the NHS dental scheme ?