Down in the Mouth

I’m feeling pretty down in the mouth at the moment. In fact there is no depth to which the down-ness in my mouth won’t plunge and there is no limit to the self-pity that I can heap upon myself. And nothing that you can say will make me feel any better.

 

Take, for example, the people that I heard yesterday, complaining about the long queue they’d endured at the dentist… while I was in the chair. Who would you rather be, the person sitting in the dentist’s chair or the one sitting outside on the comfy sofa, listening to Lakeland FM with a choice of newspapers to hand?

 

I had a tooth extracted. It took hours. Or it seemed like hours – long enough to ensure that every other patient was going to be at least forty minutes late throughout the rest of the day. I knew I was in trouble when the dentist turned to the dental nurse and asked for a new drill bit and a larger pair of pliers. About twenty minutes later he said "This one’s a bit stubborn isn’t it". And twenty minutes after that he explained "I’ve got most of it out now; we’ll get that last bit next time, when you come back for the implant."

 

And have you seen the cost of dental implants recently? For the price of one implant, you could keep a horse in training for two months with most trainers. Although probably not with Willie Mullins, which is apparently the reason why Michael O’Leary has just removed around sixty horses from the Irish maestro’s yard. Apparently there was a disagreement over the cost of training fees and Michael O’Leary, the owner of Gigginstown Stud, needs 120 new teeth… per month. Or something like that.

 

Anyway, I can’t feel too sorry for Willie Mullins, nice chap though he undoubtedly is, because he still has lots of very smart horses to train – and unless he tells me otherwise, I don’t think he’s had a tooth extracted this week...

I don’t feel particularly sorry for the multi-millionaire Michael O’Leary either, although I’d wish him all the luck in the world - if he'd just send a few of those sixty horses to some of our local trainers in Cumbria. How much fun could he have with horses like Blow By Blow and Apple's Jade, if only they were trained by the likes of James Moffatt and Diane Sayer?

 

Perhaps Dan Skelton, in the south of England, will get one of the Gigginstown horses instead – he already trains this week’s selection: Zarib at Fontwell Park on Saturday. I’m sure he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, which reminds me – did I tell you that I’ve had a tooth out this week?