There's no need to be down in the mouth!
Visiting the dentist is never a pleasant experience. Being tipped upsidedown, poked, prodded and scraped is no-one's idea of fun. Especially when there's always the possibility that you might have to undergo the whole ordeal again, this time accompanied by the sound of a drill squealing through your skull. So when I was given the all-clear recently, I was pleased enough. Until, as I was jumping down from the chair, the dentist asked: "Have you ever had a problem with your smile?" What sort of a question is that? My mouth opens and closes just fine. And I seemed to be able to form a smile, although by this point it was becoming ever more strained. I sensed that what he was really asking me was whether complete strangers came up to me in the street to tell me that my teeth were crooked. OK, they may not be perfectly straight or blindingly white, and my smile is a bit gummy, but I'm pretty sure they're not that bad. Yet all of this could be easily fixed, apparently, and the dentist seemed disappointed when I declined the chance to look like a toothpaste ad. Besides, I hardly dared ask the cost, having already had to force down a gulp at the price of a check-up and scale and polish. I suppose the credit crunch bites for dentists too. After all, someone has to pay for the leather sofas and original artwork in the reception. Obviously, I'm not going to identify the dentist concerned. The idea of pointing the finger at someone who may one day be hovering over my delicate gums wielding a sharp needle and a vibrating drill seems just the least bit foolish. But it left me wondering just what defines perfection and how far are we prepared to go to achieve it? Out of curiosity, when I got home, I consulted the internet – always the Font of All Knowledge, after all – to find the answer.
Apparently there are set "rules" for what constitutes a "perfect" smile. "Ideally," the rules state, "only the pink triangular parts of the gum between the teeth show."But, it notes, an "irregular gum line" – clearly I have one of these – can be easily "corrected". It's all to do with something called the "Golden Proportion". The Ancient Greeks discovered it, and before you ask what they knew about cosmetic dentistry, apparently it applies to all things in nature.In dentistry terms, this means that each tooth should be a certain size and dimension in relation to those that surround it. There was also a lot of talk about symmetry. But, in my experience, symmetry has very little to do with beauty. Take supermodel Kate Moss or actress Keira Knightly. Both women are undoubtedly beautiful and neither seem troubled by not having what you'd call the perfect smile The Americans, of course, have a completely different attitude. To us Brits, "bad teeth" means that they are going rotten; to our friends across the Pond, they are simply uneven.
But the fact is that Mother Nature knows little of such perfection, so anything altered to appear so is, well, plainly artificial.
If you happen to be lucky enough to have been blessed with naturally even, pearly-white teeth, then that's wonderful, but for the rest of us, why the urgency for perfection? If everyone had the correct formula for a perfect smile, surely every grin would look the same as the next. And where do you stop? Supposing I have my smile "corrected", do I then need to inflate my lips, paralyse my frown and have someone vacuum up the fat from my love handles?
When I think of it like that, I'd rather stick with my God-given quirky flaws.

Raise the song of harvest-home!
WITH food prices marching ever upward, I can’t be the only one whose trips to the supermarket are becoming more considered, these days. Last week I was about to pick up the fancy French conserve that is thrice the price of the budget version. Then it occurred to me that I buy it only because it tastes “homemade”. So did I really need to pay over the odds for something I could easily make myself?.
You see, this is my favourite time of year. The minute it begins to get just that little bit back-endish, I’m off in a flurry of pie baking and soup making. Now, though, it’s also making economic sense.
Nearby, I noticed a huge pile of strawberries, all “reduced to clear”. They may not have been the prettiest, shiniest, shapeliest berries (although experience has taught me that visual perfection has little to do with flavour), but they were fresh enough. What’s more, there were also blackberries. And I hadn’t tasted blackberry jam since childhood.
When I was small, we had ancient wild bramble bushes at the bottom of our garden. Long, late summer days always seemed to end in trips to the brambles, bowl in hand, hunting for the juiciest, ripest berries. Even the necessary thorn pricks and inevitable inky-purple stained fingertips were worth the reward of all things blackberry: pies, crumbles, fools and jam.
Just the sight of them in the supermarket made me yearn for those days and I couldn’t resist. An afternoon in the kitchen filled the pantry with jams and stacked the freezer with fruit pies.
Actually I’m getting scarily domesticated. I’ve even started gardening. Well, growing salad leaves at any rate. I did make several squirrel-spoiled attempts at pumpkins, but this year I was determined to branch out.
I realise that veteran allotment owners out there might not be too impressed by the 122g of short, bendy carrots that I harvested last week, but I thought I did quite well for a first attempt. And mighty nice they tasted too.
Next year, of course, I’ll know that if you want six-inch long carrots, you need to give them at least that much depth of soil … but I’ve seen Gardener’s World; even the experts don’t always get it right.
Even for the newbie veggie grower, it can get pretty competitive. As I patted myself on the back for my carrots, a friend texted me with a picture of her bumper potato crop. Well I couldn’t let that go, so I countered with a snap of my carrots (with nothing to measure their size against, they looked rather impressive) and, for good measure, threw in one of the large, juicy, ripe peach that had unexpectedly sprung up on the patio tree.
Soon, I suppose, I’ll be getting photographs of bountiful beans and tons of tomatoes. But just wait until next year …
While I can’t imagine myself ever knitting my own muesli, or turning the garden into a set for The Good Life, I’m determined to expand, although my loathing of garden creepy crawlies means my family reckon I’m much more a Margot than a Barbara.
Nevertheless, all that sowing and tending, and waiting for the weather and Mother Nature to do their magic, keeps you in touch with the turning seasons in a way that purchasing packaged, out-of-season produce, not to mention processed foods, never can.
Even buying locally grown in-season fruit and veg will do that. And while I won’t claim that it’s going to save the planet, it’s certainly not doing it any harm.
And, you know, I’ve a hunch that, with cost of living skyrocketing, I’m not going to be the only novice veggie grower, or careful shopper, enjoying a sense of self-satisfaction, come next year’s harvest.

Sweet nostalgia!
IT was a trip to Matlock Bath that brought back memories of my childhood. Although I'd passed through many times on my way to Bakewell, it had been years since I stopped off there.

Now a walk around Derbyshire's very own "seaside" resort was like taking a trip back in time, with its kiss-me-quick cheerfulness, ice-cream kiosks and fish and chip shops.

But this is Derbyshire, so rock shops here are full of fluorite and Blue John, rather than sticks of the seaside version. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of places peddling fudge and candy floss.

There's nothing like a sugary trip down memory lane and the shops that particularly took my fancy were the old-fashioned sweet shops. In one I stared wide-eyed at shelf upon shelf of huge jars of traditional sweets.

From sherbet pips to cinder toffee, sarsaparilla tablets, bulls' eyes, floral gums and barley sugar. Name any old sweetie and I'll bet it was there.


The shop also had a huge selection of liquorice products: wands and wheels and fudge as well as liquorice-filled chocolate. I didn't really like the sound of that. Actually I didn't like the sound of any of them, since I've always loathed liquorice. So much so that, to avoid it, I always ate my sherbet fountains with a spoon.

One of the delights of a visit to Chesterfield was that wonderful fragrance that hit you the second you stepped off the train: the smell of Refreshers coming from the Trebor factory

As an adult I visited Hershey, Pennsylvania, where the intoxicating aroma of chocolate fills the air. Mind you, there is a town that celebrates candy; even the street lamps resemble chocolates.

Every summer, in homage to my schooldays, I treat myself to a pick-and-mix bag. Such things were usually reserved for school holidays because it was all too easy to spend a small fortune filling up those huge paper bags with sweets.

What I was allowed to have every week was the wonderful tenpenny bag. Which for today's kids would probably cost about a pound.

Funny isn't it, how when you get all nostalgic, you end up turning into your parents? But when I was a little girl, ten pence worth of sweeties could last you all weekend. I reckon for that amount I could get a toffee log, a couple of flying saucers, a chocolate saw, some parma violets, a marshmallow cable and four halfpenny chews. Sometimes, though, I just blew the lot on some Love Hearts and a candy watch.

We had plenty of novelty sweets, too. We were the first generation to experience Space Candy, a sweet that exploded alarmingly in your mouth when you dropped some on your tongue. It was utterly compulsive, if slightly unpleasant. If you dipped in the packet with a wet finger you ran the risk of activating the candy before it reached your mouth, so popping some in the direction of your eye. Health and safety would have had a field day.

Yes, eating sweets can be hazardous. We've probably all lemonade-crystalled ourselves into sneezing fits. And you underestimate the tongue-slicing power of a cracked sherbet lemon only once.

Back in Matlock Bath I decided to try a bag of "Derbyshire Mix". I'd never heard of that before and feared it might be a modern invention, but oh what a treasure trove it proved to be: humbugs, and fruit rock, rhubarb and custards, and satin pillows aplenty.

I tried to resist but had got only as far as Cromford before giving up any pretence of maturity and taking a sneaky dip-in. But then I was betrayed to my fellow bus passengers by a pear drop-induced coughing fit.

I thought briefly about offering the bag around, but held back. Some things you just have to indulge in by yourself.