The Teeth Room
"The dream that I had was a dream in a waking world, just a dream that I had in my dreaming world, that I had was a dream in a waking world, and it's a waking world."
No proper entry tonight, as Jennifer is arriving at Heathrow in the morning and I need to get some sleep. I've spent most of today clearing up, and I came across quite a few things that I haven't seen for a while, among them a floppy disk full of the things I wrote while I was in Gaddesden Row, which was where I lived before I came home and started the blog. In lieu of a story from the now, I've decided instead to give you an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my friend Daisy when I first arrived in the quiet, rural village of Gaddesden Row. It was composed on September 28th, 2003.
I chose this particular piece because it's characteristic of the letters I write to Daisy, which are usually rare, lengthy, and at least two parts fiction to one part fact. I don't know quite when this began to happen, but once it had, I was unable to stop one-upping myself, and each missive had to be stranger than the last. Anyway, here's the excerpt.
PS: Service will be sporadic until Sunday the 23rd.
Gaddesden Row sounds like the kind of name you might give a prison block, which is ironic given the general demeanour and habits of its populous. It occupies a short stretch of road between Redbourne and Studham, both of which are major towns by comparison. I walked its entire length the day after I arrived and was struck by the lack of civilisation. There are no streetlights here, and no markings on a road that only ever seems to be used by walkers and cyclists, horses and the occasional boar. At rush hour, it plays host to a procession of battered cars from the eighties.
Later, at the pub, Little Nev told me that only the locals know how to drive these roads properly. The secret, he said, was practice. “Everyone crashes the first time,” he told me, before bending his head to lap hungrily at some bitter he’d spilled on the bar.
Ordinarily I’d have doubted such an outrageous statistic, but something I’d seen on my wanderings seemed to confirm Nev’s claim.
The road down to Cupid Green is perhaps the most treacherous of all. It is barely wide enough for a single car, even a small one; an asphalt rollercoaster of twists and turns and sudden dips. I found myself on it by accident. I’d been walking through the fields that day, pretending to check out the local rambler’s paths while pursuing my secret agenda of boar-hunting, when a group of cows that had been grazing on the far side of a lush and bountiful field suddenly turned and began stumbling towards me. Disturbed by their uncommon state of arousal and unwilling to use the Magnum on creatures that may have belonged to some gin-crazed farmer with ballistic superiority, I decided to make a bid for safety, running swiftly towards a barbed wire fence, which I leapt with impressive agility, barely noticing the flashing lights until it was too late.
Landing amongst the emergency services with the mud of private property caking your trainers and a gun stuffed down the back of your combats is never a happy time, but on this occasion they were too distracted to take much notice of me. A bright green VW Beetle had gone straight on at a vicious and sudden left turn, barrelling straight into a tree that might have been placed with just such an eventuality in mind. You never can tell with the locals. They are old and strange, and I sometimes hear them screaming on the moors at night.
“I’ll go around,” I said to a policeman whose wandering eyes had registered my presence.
“It’s okay,” he replied, with a creepy smile. “Just walk on through. They won’t mind.” He stood aside as he said this, gesturing to the ambulance that stood beside him with its back doors wide open. I caught the briefest of glimpses of its interior; blood and shredded clothes and frantically working paramedics with eyes wild from panic or maybe amphetamines.
“Sweet baby Jesus!” I shrieked, and hurried quickly past, my face averted and my ears ringing with the laughter of the local constabulary.
-----
Most people in Gaddesden Row seem to have some kind of nickname that invariably involves simply prefixing their Christian name with a verb or adjective that sums up their existence in this awful, hopeless way that makes me worry about what they’ll end up calling me. It must be like having your epitaph composed by people who know nothing of you beyond the habits of your social existence. Bacardi Mick, Tandoori Neil, Limping Sid. In Gaddesden Row, and particularly within the confines of The Old Chequers, this is who you are. There is no need of surnames.
Little Nev is so named because he’s short and his name’s Neville. Which is hardly rocket science, but there you go. Personally, I’d have come up with something a wee bit more inventive, but that’s just because I think the man goes far beyond the nickname. Without Little Nev, I’d have never learned as much about the sewage works of the Gaddesden area and the intricacies of wearing false teeth as I ended up finding out on the first few days of my stay here. And believe me, shit like that can keep a man sane.
It started the way these things often do, with Nev having no understanding of my constitution when it comes to bourbon. We were having a male bonding session and the poor guy was sure he could match me drink for drink. Oh, Nev, I remember thinking, you have no idea what strangeness you are willingly allowing into your life.
We started at eight, and by ten he was swaying on his stool, talking gibberish and making lewd suggestions to the girl behind the bar. At half past, he suddenly lurched towards the bathroom, his face draining of colour and his throat working with the effort of keeping down a week’s worth of alcohol.
I have been in this situation many times, and I thought nothing of it until a little while later, when he staggered back with vomit-stained clothes and no teeth, trying desperately to explain what had happened while everyone in the immediate vicinity took cover and tried to hold on to their rising gorges.
False teeth, it turned out, can be something of a curse to the man who finds himself bent over the toilet, puking uncontrollably. Nev’s had quite literally been forced from his mouth and into the bowl, where they’d stayed until - not realising they were there - he’d flushed the mess away.
Which was how we ended up in the car park, crouched over an open manhole with a high-powered torch while the locals laughed at us from the warmth and safety of the pub.
“They’re gone, Nev,” I said finally. “And even if they were here, do you really want to be hauling them out of there? I mean, Christ, you may as well just go and take a bite out of a turd.”
Nev looked at me, said something unintelligible, and then ran for the toilets again.
-----
Officious Woman: "Good morning, Chiltern Sewage Company. Linda speaking."
Michael: "Hi there. I was wondering if you could help me. A friend of mine lost his
false teeth last night. They went into the sewer and we couldn’t find them. Do you have a lost property office or something?"
Linda: "Indeed we do, sir."
Michael: "It should be fairly easy then. I mean, Jesus, I bet you don’t have many sets of teeth there, right?"
Linda: "You’d be surprised, sir."
Michael: "Really?"
Linda: "Oh, yeah. People lose all kinds of weird things in the sink or the toilet."
Michael: "Like what?"
Linda: "Well, we get the usual things, jewellery mostly, weddings rings and the like. Then there’s the weird stuff. We get false teeth, gold teeth, clothes, wallets, mobile phones, personal organisers, butt plugs, dildos, money, drugs…all kinds of sh…stuff."
Michael: "Wow. I’d never even thought about that. Do you have many sets of false teeth?"
Linda: "About three hundred at the moment."
Michael: "How do people identify them?"
Linda: "Search me."
Michael: "Well, I need your address. My friend and I are going to stop by later to see if his teeth are there."
Linda: "No problem. I’ll be here. Its..."
-----
So Nev and I drove the treacherous roads to the Lost Property Office, where Linda, a large woman in her late twenties with huge, empty eyes, greeted us like old friends.
“The Teeth Room is this way,” she said, leading us through a labyrinth of intricate corridors.
“How many people claim things from here?” I asked.
“Not many. Most people simply don’t realise they’ve lost these things. Either that or they wanted to be rid of them.”
“So what happens to all this stuff?”
“We have an auction every three months, but hardly anybody knows about it. The staff come along, and a few members of the local council.”
“And illegal things?”
“We give them to the police or the staff take them,” she said, offering me a crooked smile. “I have quite the collection of Class A drugs and sex toys.”
I glanced at Nev, but he was staring at the plaque on the door Linda had led us to. This was the Teeth room.
“Come on in,” she said.
Teeth without mouths or faces are a worrying thing, as is anything organic and functional when witnessed without context. Just imagine walking into a room full of eyes or noses, or even genitalia.
“Can you see them?” I asked Nev, trying not to look at Linda, who was eyeing me with undisguised lust.
“Maybe,” he replied. But it was clear that he couldn’t. What Nev could see was an opportunity for some free teeth.
Linda and I stood in the doorway, watching as he scanned the shelves, occasionally trying on a set for size.
“Just take whatever feels right,” she said, and laughed loudly, making me jump. “They’ll only be sold on.”
“Who buys them?” I asked her.
“Orthodontists, mainly. But the manager occasionally needs his replacing.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve got a replica of this porn star’s cock. It’s twelve inches long. Cost me two pounds. There was a bidding war.”
I found myself nodding appreciatively. “Bargain,” I said.
So Nev got his teeth and a couple of spare sets and I got a moneybag full of uncut cocaine. I also got Linda’s number. I probably won’t call, but who knows? It’s dull out here in the sticks.
No proper entry tonight, as Jennifer is arriving at Heathrow in the morning and I need to get some sleep. I've spent most of today clearing up, and I came across quite a few things that I haven't seen for a while, among them a floppy disk full of the things I wrote while I was in Gaddesden Row, which was where I lived before I came home and started the blog. In lieu of a story from the now, I've decided instead to give you an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my friend Daisy when I first arrived in the quiet, rural village of Gaddesden Row. It was composed on September 28th, 2003.
I chose this particular piece because it's characteristic of the letters I write to Daisy, which are usually rare, lengthy, and at least two parts fiction to one part fact. I don't know quite when this began to happen, but once it had, I was unable to stop one-upping myself, and each missive had to be stranger than the last. Anyway, here's the excerpt.
PS: Service will be sporadic until Sunday the 23rd.
Gaddesden Row sounds like the kind of name you might give a prison block, which is ironic given the general demeanour and habits of its populous. It occupies a short stretch of road between Redbourne and Studham, both of which are major towns by comparison. I walked its entire length the day after I arrived and was struck by the lack of civilisation. There are no streetlights here, and no markings on a road that only ever seems to be used by walkers and cyclists, horses and the occasional boar. At rush hour, it plays host to a procession of battered cars from the eighties.
Later, at the pub, Little Nev told me that only the locals know how to drive these roads properly. The secret, he said, was practice. “Everyone crashes the first time,” he told me, before bending his head to lap hungrily at some bitter he’d spilled on the bar.
Ordinarily I’d have doubted such an outrageous statistic, but something I’d seen on my wanderings seemed to confirm Nev’s claim.
The road down to Cupid Green is perhaps the most treacherous of all. It is barely wide enough for a single car, even a small one; an asphalt rollercoaster of twists and turns and sudden dips. I found myself on it by accident. I’d been walking through the fields that day, pretending to check out the local rambler’s paths while pursuing my secret agenda of boar-hunting, when a group of cows that had been grazing on the far side of a lush and bountiful field suddenly turned and began stumbling towards me. Disturbed by their uncommon state of arousal and unwilling to use the Magnum on creatures that may have belonged to some gin-crazed farmer with ballistic superiority, I decided to make a bid for safety, running swiftly towards a barbed wire fence, which I leapt with impressive agility, barely noticing the flashing lights until it was too late.
Landing amongst the emergency services with the mud of private property caking your trainers and a gun stuffed down the back of your combats is never a happy time, but on this occasion they were too distracted to take much notice of me. A bright green VW Beetle had gone straight on at a vicious and sudden left turn, barrelling straight into a tree that might have been placed with just such an eventuality in mind. You never can tell with the locals. They are old and strange, and I sometimes hear them screaming on the moors at night.
“I’ll go around,” I said to a policeman whose wandering eyes had registered my presence.
“It’s okay,” he replied, with a creepy smile. “Just walk on through. They won’t mind.” He stood aside as he said this, gesturing to the ambulance that stood beside him with its back doors wide open. I caught the briefest of glimpses of its interior; blood and shredded clothes and frantically working paramedics with eyes wild from panic or maybe amphetamines.
“Sweet baby Jesus!” I shrieked, and hurried quickly past, my face averted and my ears ringing with the laughter of the local constabulary.
-----
Most people in Gaddesden Row seem to have some kind of nickname that invariably involves simply prefixing their Christian name with a verb or adjective that sums up their existence in this awful, hopeless way that makes me worry about what they’ll end up calling me. It must be like having your epitaph composed by people who know nothing of you beyond the habits of your social existence. Bacardi Mick, Tandoori Neil, Limping Sid. In Gaddesden Row, and particularly within the confines of The Old Chequers, this is who you are. There is no need of surnames.
Little Nev is so named because he’s short and his name’s Neville. Which is hardly rocket science, but there you go. Personally, I’d have come up with something a wee bit more inventive, but that’s just because I think the man goes far beyond the nickname. Without Little Nev, I’d have never learned as much about the sewage works of the Gaddesden area and the intricacies of wearing false teeth as I ended up finding out on the first few days of my stay here. And believe me, shit like that can keep a man sane.
It started the way these things often do, with Nev having no understanding of my constitution when it comes to bourbon. We were having a male bonding session and the poor guy was sure he could match me drink for drink. Oh, Nev, I remember thinking, you have no idea what strangeness you are willingly allowing into your life.
We started at eight, and by ten he was swaying on his stool, talking gibberish and making lewd suggestions to the girl behind the bar. At half past, he suddenly lurched towards the bathroom, his face draining of colour and his throat working with the effort of keeping down a week’s worth of alcohol.
I have been in this situation many times, and I thought nothing of it until a little while later, when he staggered back with vomit-stained clothes and no teeth, trying desperately to explain what had happened while everyone in the immediate vicinity took cover and tried to hold on to their rising gorges.
False teeth, it turned out, can be something of a curse to the man who finds himself bent over the toilet, puking uncontrollably. Nev’s had quite literally been forced from his mouth and into the bowl, where they’d stayed until - not realising they were there - he’d flushed the mess away.
Which was how we ended up in the car park, crouched over an open manhole with a high-powered torch while the locals laughed at us from the warmth and safety of the pub.
“They’re gone, Nev,” I said finally. “And even if they were here, do you really want to be hauling them out of there? I mean, Christ, you may as well just go and take a bite out of a turd.”
Nev looked at me, said something unintelligible, and then ran for the toilets again.
-----
Officious Woman: "Good morning, Chiltern Sewage Company. Linda speaking."
Michael: "Hi there. I was wondering if you could help me. A friend of mine lost his
false teeth last night. They went into the sewer and we couldn’t find them. Do you have a lost property office or something?"
Linda: "Indeed we do, sir."
Michael: "It should be fairly easy then. I mean, Jesus, I bet you don’t have many sets of teeth there, right?"
Linda: "You’d be surprised, sir."
Michael: "Really?"
Linda: "Oh, yeah. People lose all kinds of weird things in the sink or the toilet."
Michael: "Like what?"
Linda: "Well, we get the usual things, jewellery mostly, weddings rings and the like. Then there’s the weird stuff. We get false teeth, gold teeth, clothes, wallets, mobile phones, personal organisers, butt plugs, dildos, money, drugs…all kinds of sh…stuff."
Michael: "Wow. I’d never even thought about that. Do you have many sets of false teeth?"
Linda: "About three hundred at the moment."
Michael: "How do people identify them?"
Linda: "Search me."
Michael: "Well, I need your address. My friend and I are going to stop by later to see if his teeth are there."
Linda: "No problem. I’ll be here. Its..."
-----
So Nev and I drove the treacherous roads to the Lost Property Office, where Linda, a large woman in her late twenties with huge, empty eyes, greeted us like old friends.
“The Teeth Room is this way,” she said, leading us through a labyrinth of intricate corridors.
“How many people claim things from here?” I asked.
“Not many. Most people simply don’t realise they’ve lost these things. Either that or they wanted to be rid of them.”
“So what happens to all this stuff?”
“We have an auction every three months, but hardly anybody knows about it. The staff come along, and a few members of the local council.”
“And illegal things?”
“We give them to the police or the staff take them,” she said, offering me a crooked smile. “I have quite the collection of Class A drugs and sex toys.”
I glanced at Nev, but he was staring at the plaque on the door Linda had led us to. This was the Teeth room.
“Come on in,” she said.
Teeth without mouths or faces are a worrying thing, as is anything organic and functional when witnessed without context. Just imagine walking into a room full of eyes or noses, or even genitalia.
“Can you see them?” I asked Nev, trying not to look at Linda, who was eyeing me with undisguised lust.
“Maybe,” he replied. But it was clear that he couldn’t. What Nev could see was an opportunity for some free teeth.
Linda and I stood in the doorway, watching as he scanned the shelves, occasionally trying on a set for size.
“Just take whatever feels right,” she said, and laughed loudly, making me jump. “They’ll only be sold on.”
“Who buys them?” I asked her.
“Orthodontists, mainly. But the manager occasionally needs his replacing.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve got a replica of this porn star’s cock. It’s twelve inches long. Cost me two pounds. There was a bidding war.”
I found myself nodding appreciatively. “Bargain,” I said.
So Nev got his teeth and a couple of spare sets and I got a moneybag full of uncut cocaine. I also got Linda’s number. I probably won’t call, but who knows? It’s dull out here in the sticks.
posted by Michael at 10:08 PM
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