When You're Deaf, Keep It Buttoned Part 2

It started so very well. Mike and I met at our designated place. He looked exactly as I'd remembered him all four days ago - not lip-licking scrummy, but something kind of appealing around the eyes.

What I haven’t told you is that what I'd referred to minimalistically as a temporary crown was, in fact, a temporary bridge, an appliance made necessary by my darling children donkeys' years ago when I was still suffering from a three year bout of chronic Lovely Mushy Mummy Syndrome. I’d had two of the annoying little buggers dear sweet things on my knees, one in front of the other, and was jigging them up and down on my lap whilst singing them some dorky song. A word of caution - never stimulate a male of any age in any way – it will all end in tears. As it did in my case. The child in the front got a bit giddy, slammed his head into the kid at the back who slammed his head into my teeth – the front one of which went flying to the back of my throat. The only thing that could be done was to file down the teeth on either side, vampire style, to accommodate a bridge.

Now it just so happened that a few days before the date with Mike, I'd severely chipped said bridge whilst opening a beer bottle at a Hell's Angels rally in Brighton. Oops, sorry!  Unreliable narrator moment there! Where was I? …whilst trying to disengage the vacuum packaging from a halogen light bulb. (Spit, grumble, mumble, moronic designers...) The bridge had to be replaced before it crumbled. The dentist said it would be TWO WEEKS before the cruddy temporary plac contraption could be exchanged for my brand new set of gleaming porcelain gnashers. Such is the state of dentistry in the UK: you give them hundreds of thousands of pounds for their craptastic service, they inform you 'two weeks minimum' without so much as apologising that you’re going to resemble Abraham Lincoln for the next fourteen days.

When Mike had pushed for an early date and I’d said I’d rather not because of the crown, I thought the white lie would be irrelevant because he wouldn’t see me anyway. But the Abe look might be harder to disguise...

We caught up on the week over starters. He didn’t seem to be peering at my mouth as I fluttered my eyelashes in a feeble attempt to look alluring. He had, after all, said he needed  a correction to his laser eye treatment. For the main course I’d chosen some fancy chicken salad. What I hadn’t banked on was that the chef also needed some laser eye correction. Don’t ask me how it happened – I have no idea. I’d already eaten about three quarters of the salad, chewing with my molars mainly, when I chomped into what was supposed to be chicken breast; but it was a bone. It dislodged the bridge. I put my hand over my mouth in a sort of ‘I'm listening intently to everything you're saying’ kind of way, made captivated (sic) eyes at him as he spoke, all the while surreptitiously trying to put the bridge back in place with my tongue. But the more I fiddled with it, the looser it became until finally the bloody, sodding, shitty piece of British-made rubbish slid off altogether. 

In the meantime, Mike, who’d been telling me about his time in the Falklands, asked me whether I remembered where I was when I heard the Belgrano had sunk  – the usual stuff of second dates, I should imagine. Well, I couldn’t answer, could I? Not without revealing my predicament. He asked me again. I just grinned, closed-mouth, going “Mm. Hmm”. (I'm killing myself laughing here - there's just something gloriously absurd about the juxtaposition of discussing the Belgrano and my teeth falling out - go figure!) 

“Belgrano?” he said. “You do remember the Belgrano, don’t you?

Me still grinning like the village idiot after a three week bender. 

“Are you all right?" he asked finally.    

Aw, bugger and thod it! I thtood up, thaid “Ekthcuthe me for a thecond” and throde off to the Ladieth to thee whether thomething could be thalvaged from thith horrendouth thituation.

Once in the loo, I managed to stick the bridge back on the stumps. Of course - you won’t be surprised - not before another of the female diners walked in and caught me, toothless, rinsing it under the tap.

So, all in all, yeah. A brill evening. Thanks for asking. 

When You're Deaf, Keep It Buttoned

I knew it. I knew it! I shouldn’t have accepted the second date with Mike.

For fff’s sake. It’s awful, even nightmarish, I tell you. But, you know, I just can’t stop laughing about it – really I can't - eternal gratitude to Le bon Dieu and Monsieur Ionesco for a sense of the absurd. My latest episode may very well haunt me until my dying day - on a par with one of the other colossal faux pas in the Life and Times of a Utter Twerp. Lisez et pleurez. 

The previous one went a little like this. I was straight out of l’universite and attending an all day interview for the job of my dreams. It was one of those graduate milk-round situations where they invited the 25 short-listed candidates for the third stage. The idea was that each person would be grilled by members of various departments – a bit like a conveyor belt. I was the fifth from the end to go through the process. By the time I’d arrived back at the conference room, twenty of the others were already sitting at a table eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. I came in rather smug chuffed with how things had gone, sat down ready to stuff ma bouche, and caught the tail end of the conversation.

Oh the folly and the (moronic) confidence of youth! It must have been those giant shoulder pads that did it; Alexis Carrington has a lot to answer for. Was there anything I didn’t know about in those days? No. Was there anything I wasn’t prepared to share my opinion about? No. I’m clenching my buttocks at the recollection. Is my face bright purple? Oy vay iz mir. Mega vay. 

Come on, CB, tell ‘em. Be authentic. Share and reveal your mind-boggling pratitude.

For some inexplicable reason, the crowd seemed to be having a go at the works of Picasso. I thought they were all Philistines and launched in to defend him, saying the man was an unparalleled genius  - oh family, friends and followers, I can barely go on –  my throat’s constricting; that he was perhaps misunderstood, that… oh well, never mind. I’m feeling a tad nauseous again. I went on. And on. In all this time, I only used pronouns i.e. he, him, his. What I hadn’t noticed was that everyone, candidates and interviewers alike, were gawping at me as if I’d been released from Bedlam way before the medication had kicked in. Blithely I spewed forth, convinced they’d all be staggered by my knowledge and reasoning. And of course, I’d be the one to get the job.  Of course!

Well, I’ll tell you that I didn’t get the job. And I’ll tell you pourquoi, but before I do so, this is the lesson that I learnt. KEEP YOUR TRAP SHUT WHEN YOU HAVEN’T GOT THE VAGUEST IDEA OF WHAT’S GOING ON! AND LISTEN! Oh - and always make sure you’ve made good use of the Q tips before you leave the house. (Actually, let’s face it – I never did learn any of those lessons. Not in their entirety, like.)  

It was only beaucoup plus tard, when my brain caught up with my gallivanting gob, that it finally dawned on me they hadn’t been discussing Picasso at all. No, it was someone completely different. I had, in fact, spent ten minutes championing and extolling the virtues of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, head of the Central African Republic from about 1966 to 1979, a dictator who massacred men, women and children. Yes, a mass murderer and apparently, ooh -  doncha just lerve him -  my hero.

Ground. Take my feet first and suck the rest in quick.

You can read about my sweetheart here.

Anyway, when Mike asked whether I wanted that second date for dinner a deux, I said that I’d love to... anytime next week. “Next week?” he said, as if I’d just cancelled the next ten year's worth of Grand Prix. “Can’t you make it any sooner?” Well I could, in theory, but I didn’t want to. Do you remember the teensie weensie microscopic white lie I told here? Well, it was another of those situations.

This time, however, I thought I’d come clean. After all, look where the last one got me, bloody nowhere. I told him I’d rather not because I was having a temporary crown fitted and wouldn't be at my usual spectacularly pulchritudinous best. The man’s a grown-up (have I already mentioned that?); he said “Not to worry. You can order semolina and drink it through a straw. Come anyway. Please.”

I noticed his profile didn’t use the oft quoted knicker-wettingly hilarious line ‘I have all my own teeth’, so I guess he understood. 

Anyway, put like that, dear followers, how could I refuse?