Grumpy Oldie Man
My new Benny Hill look
The only cure for my latest illness – imitating the late comedian matthew norman Reflecting on the year drawing mercifully to its close, I am aware that it has, even by the hypochondriacal standards of the last four decades, been a frantic one on the medical front. Many phials of blood have been extracted and analysed. Vinyl-gloved fingers have been inserted, and duly waggled. The wizened little raisins that so reluctantly stand proxy for my testes were prodded by a GP, preparatory to the date with ultrasound technology that unearthed no worse than a matching pair of benign cysts. By way of gastroscopic merriment, meanwhile, a camera was threaded down my throat, past the oesophagus, and all the way into the duodenum, where a tiny polyp was the sole abnormal discovery. You needn’t be a top-ranked haematologist to know that those with Jewish blood tend not to be huge fans of tempting fate (‘beshroying’ in the Yiddish). When tempted, it has that tendency to kick you in the cobblers – though the very best of British to fate with, in my case, finding them. So absolutely the last thing I would ever reply, to anyone kind and/or foolish enough to ask after my health, is ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ What I do in fact reply is that I have no idea how I am, not having had a full body MRI scan in the last 12 hours; but that nothing too worrisome has been diagnosed at this point. That said, something irksome has been self-diagnosed. A new ailment to me, though sadly I presume not to some of you, nocturnal bruxism is the grinding, thanks to the winsome mischievousness of the subconscious mind, of teeth in one’s asleep. Before we go on, we must guard against beshroying (we are not, after all, goyim) by observing this: these 10 The Oldie January 2022
symptoms may stem from a malignancy, or some alarming disorder of the nervous system. That said, touch wood, they do seem plainly to point to bruxism. Along with a remorseless ache in the jaw, and sporadic ear and scalp pain, most of what teeth remain in situ are jagged, chipped or worn down. All classic signs of sleepful dental grinding. In the brave new world of Omicron, I haven’t even considered waging attritional war with the surgery’s recorded message (‘You are number 197, 273 in the queue…’). And because I’ve dispensed with my dentist after a curt six-and-a-half-minute check-up, the other conventional diagnostic route is also closed off. It is to the internet, then, that I turned for advice. In one sense, this proved a triumph. There may not be a cure, other perhaps than five-times-weekly psychoanalysis for the next 35 years. But there is a simple remedy. The most effective analgesic for this condition is to poke out the tongue, well beyond the lips. This not only relaxes the muscles in the jaw, however, instantly relieving the pain. It also makes one look, at best, like Benny Hill in upside-down saluting mode, moments before he embarks on another high-speed chase of his Angels; and, at worst, like a savagely cruel parody of someone with learning difficulties, vaguely in the style of Ricky Gervais’s curious creation Derek. It also has a predictably potent effect on the diction.
Most people who have encountered me these last days have, to their credit, been too mannerly to comment. My mother, who is by no means most people, was wontedly unconstrained by the dictates of politesse. ‘What on earth are you doing now?’ was her reflex response when the tongue popped out, as a peculiarly tense moment in Homes Under the Hammer sharpened the pain. ‘Do you honestly believe, with your looks, that you can afford to make yourself look even more like an imbecile?’ She had a point. The romantic opportunities for a man of my age, wits and appearance were adequately narrow as things stood. An attempt to explain myself to her was met with first bemusement, and then a brusque reference to the limited commercial opportunities nowadays for the professional Lester Piggott impersonator. Anyway, assuming that the subconscious mind has no interest whatever in spontaneous remission, the choice henceforth is stark. Keep the tongue sheathed, and uncomplainingly tolerate the pain. Or seem perpetually to be auditioning for a part as an extra in a community-centre revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Readers of whatever gender, or none, may well be familiar with a version of this conundrum from the age-old high-heels question. Is it worth enduring agony to look good (or, in my case, less hideous)? At this initial stage of a brave battle against bruxism, it is uncertain which way things will go. On the one hand, suffering in silence has not, thus far, been a notably defining character trait. On the other, being approached in a north-London park by a palpably concerned dog-walker, who asked if I was able to tell her where my carer might be, is an experience I wouldn’t necessarily care to incorporate into the daily routine.
