NHS dentistry

I can't say much for the maternity perks in this country, but I will go to great lengths to tell the world how nice the dentistry is. I do have the insane luck of having extremely good teeth: I've never even had a cavity (so far, at age 29). I do like brushing my teeth, enjoy getting tartar scraped from my teeth and I don't even mind flossing. I got seals on my teeth when I was around 10 and apparently they've done me some good. My point is that I've never minded the dentist anyway.

So I show up on Friday morning at the "free" dentist, expecting to have to jump through hoops to get my teeth cleaned and thinking they wouldn't know what they were doing. I just assumed, based on Hugh Grant's and Austin Powers' dental hygiene, that I shouldn't expect too much. I was pleased to find out I was wrong about some things British! Although there was no air conditioning in the shop, there was a huge fan aimed directly at me and for the first time in five days I stopped sweating. Then after a quick look at my x-rays from a year ago and another quick prodding at my teeth with one of those sharp, hooky tools, the dentist said my teeth looked great and that I should floss more. He even took a digital picture of the back of my bottom teeth and showed me in hi def how bad the tartar there was. Like I didn't know. Anyway, then he used some high-powered drill of a cleaner and cleaned my teeth, proceded to do the flavored (flavoured) bit with another drilly thing and I was done. Fewer than 15 minutes. "Come back in a year; x-rays in another two years."

If anything, I'd say they're more efficient than the dentists in the U.S. So that's one more thing this country's got going for it. Which is nice.

Oh, OH, OH ... and it only cost £15.