Part twenty six: OLD MAN STEPTOE

This is a story some twenty three years in the making.

In 1986 I was a nine year old, in Hough Green park with Andrew Billingsley. There wasn’t much to do that day and the park had long since ceased to hold any wonder for either of us, so we were just perched at either end of a see-saw talking about how boring everything was. Suddenly, unbidden, indeed ‘apropos of nothing’, ‘Billo’ shifted from sitting astride the see-saw to a crouched position with his feet on the seat, he made a sort of loud ‘BEEEOOOOW!’ noise and leapt backwards off the see-saw, onto the grass. I’ve never been sure what he was expecting to see happen but it appears that I was all too willing to demonstrate.

The see-saw was one of those spring-loaded affairs that if you were some sort of loser you could bounce up down on alone, so when Billo’s not inconsiderable bulk became suddenly absent and I had finished my initial plunge toward the ground, the see-saw quickly came back up and the painted steel handlebar smashed me square in the mouth. After a second or two of lying on my back thinking ‘Who’s doing all the screaming?’ I realised it was me, and stood up so that I could spit out three broken teeth and avoid choking on my own blood; Billo was flapping around by this time and burbling incoherent apologies. I got on my bike and rode back to his stupid house in a daze, cue a fucking lifetime of problems with my front teeth.

In 2010, the crown on my front tooth had failed yet again and I was left with a pirate-esque gap and a broken, infected tooth root. In desperation I trawled the internet for somebody who could do something about it and signed myself up for slightly over two-grand’s worth of dental implant. Over the next eight months I had my gum cut open, bone drilled away, bits of metal set in place, numerous sets of stitches, and on the final day the implant itself was put in with an actual hammer. Fuck you Billingsley.

For use during this time I was given a plastic denture to fill the gap in my teeth, similar to a removable brace but with a solitary incisor instead of a wire; a rictus, toothy grin that would sit next to the bed at night lest I choke on it. Jo quickly christened this ‘Old Man Steptoe’.

‘Eww!’ she declared. ‘You look like that filthy old man out of Steptoe. With your dirty false teeth and that horrible gap. Get it away from me.’

It soon became evident that Old Man Steptoe was a fragile contraption and as the weeks passed it deformed slightly and began to fit progressively less well. This was further compounded one morning when OMS had fallen on to the bedroom floor and Jo trod on him. With a sickening crack he was rent fully in twain. Shit.

Knowing that a replacement would not be forthcoming I managed to buy some Superglue without opening my mouth, and stuck the two shards back together. The glue soon dried and I tried it out, a partial success. OMS was now more loose than ever and it required quite some dexterity to speak without him flying out of my mouth. It was only another ten days or so until I was rid of him, I would manage.

August 2010 then, and as I breezed into a branch of ‘Next’ I was greeted by a not-unattractive young woman of about twenty five. As I smiled my hello however, the dry surface of Old Man Steptoe’s solitary tooth stuck to my lip and, coming free of my teeth altogether, he ended up sticking halfway out of my mouth; ‘MMMFELLO’ I managed to honk. ‘Oh dear’ came the reply, and as the surprise and disgust registered on her face the apparent tramp with the very teeth dropping out of his head turned smartly on his heel and walked straight back out of the store with as much dignity as he could muster. Which was none.

I told Jo about this and she practically prolapsed with laughter.

Some weeks later I was in Scarborough, wearing a coat that I hadn’t worn since the day OMS was retired and when I thrust my hand into my pocket I felt the familiar plastic bite of my betrayer. I was in a tat shop and noticed that amongst the crappy t-shirts and comedy mugs with boobs on them were some plastic pots containing a combination of ‘goo’ and tiny rubber bodyparts, eyeballs and lips and the like; more importantly they did not appear to be sealed. What better place? I thought, as I surreptitiously opened one of the pots and slipped Old Man Steptoe inside. Presumably some kid on holiday will have bought him and although the rubber finger wasn’t very convincing they will have been pleased with the realism of the tooth-thing.