The
Badger Who Wore Stalin’s Teeth.
By Tim Gambrell
Forgive me
while I stretch, I’ve been sat down in here for ages now. I may not be the most
mobile person on the planet these days but I still get cramp from lack of
movement. There we go. So, you’ll be wanting a statement then? Sit down, I’ll
tell you a story.
Don’t get me
wrong, I realise now what a foolhardy endeavour it seems, but I stand by my
actions all the same and if you’d been the one to find a set of discarded dentures
at the side of the road wouldn’t you try to locate their owner? ‘Leave them
be’, the voice inside says, ‘someone else’s business, someone else’s problem.
Just walk on.’ Not me, sonny. I were brought up with a Wartime community spirit
– help your fellow man, love thy neighbour and all that. Just think for a
moment; all it takes is one chewy steak meal, one slightly underdone vegetable
moussaka and you realise how much someone will be missing those plastic and
enamel plates that are chewing on the fluff in your coat pocket right now. Al dente sir? No, pureed please. Before
their naked gums have had time to adjust to the tickle of warm minestrone the
chef has appeared by their side, cleaver in hand, demanding to know why they
want to ruin his daily special by mushing it into a smoothie. They flash him
their pearly pink smile, he shudders and turns away muttering about overdone macaroni
cheese instead. Disheartened, they sit and peel the crust off the freshly baked
white bread in the basket and allow its comforting softness to dissolve slowly
in their mouth while they remember crusty rolls and chewy meals of yesteryear
and the tears roll down their hollow, sunken cheeks. Could you willingly
inflict that on someone? Honestly, it’s too much for flesh and blood to stand.
It were a
Friday when I found them. Nearly trod on them I did, on one of my slow potters
round the estate. Something must have caught my eye, it looked like the paving
slab were laughing at me. I weren’t sure what to do at first; the teeth looked
like they were in reasonable nick, obviously well-made but also quite worn and
soiled. I had a laugh menacing the wife with them for a while until she
screamed so much the dog bit me, then I re-stocked the bird table by chomping
up Malted Milk biscuits with the teeth in an old Sooty hand puppet we bought
for the grandkids. Later I crimped one of the wife’s apple pies with them while
she wasn’t looking. Freaked her out a bit, that did. After that I thought I
should try cleaning them up a bit, so I sent them through on a dishwasher cycle
and left them in an old Tupperware tub overnight.
It’s amazing
what the cold light of morning can do for the old brain – I woke up on the
Saturday suddenly gripped with a plan. I grabbed me coat and Kindle, and a
flask of sneakily Irished Ovaltine,
and sat out the end of our garden on one of our old folding chairs in case the
owner came looking. That was the Saturday. No takers, although I did finish
that new Wilbur Smith – and forty Bensons.
Sunday I went
out again (armed with corned beef sandwiches this time) and left the teeth on the
wall by the gate, displayed on one of the wife’s fancy rotating cake stands.
Still no takers; no one even asked me what I was about. What’s the matter with
people? Why are neighbours so un-nosey these days? After lunch I popped one of
me smokes between the teeth to try to attract more attention. I found a bit of
old rubber tubing in the shed and rigged it up to the filter end so I could sit
next to the display and take drags remotely. This got me noticed, and filmed by
the few kids on their phones, but also quite heavily abused. They told me I’d
been hashed on Twitter or something, the little sods. Then the wife came out in
her slippers, with a handwritten sign to lean against the cake stand: ‘are
these your dentures?’ it said, ‘enquire within, hashtag old nutter with smoking
teeth’. She glared at me disparagingly, waggled her mobile phone and wandered
back inside. No one enquired.
We left them
out there unattended all day Monday in the rain, but alas still no takers. Over
a Quality Street or two I told the wife that more drastic measures were needed:
rather than waiting for the owner to come to us, I’d have to go out and find
the owner. Tuesday was a dry day and there was a market just off the local common.
One of the many benefits of using a mobility scooter is that you’re at a good
height to see the contents of most people’s mouths as you pass them by. I spent
hours weaving in and out of the stalls and the crowds. Found a few toothless
individuals but none who’d admit to having lost a set of chompers nearabouts. This
then decided my next course of action: if the person wouldn’t admit to having
lost the teeth I’d have to shame them into accepting them by forcibly slotting
them back in place.
That evening I
sat in our lounge and practiced me technique. Upper and lower plates, one in
each hand, I’d rise up off me chair, twist at the waist, bring me wrists
together and insert, wham, in one fell swoop. The plan was that they’d be so
surprised at what I was doing they’d open their mouths anyway to object. Once
the dentures were in place they’d hardly carry their objection through would
they? There may even be a cash reward. I’d tried me hand at amateur taxidermy
back in the day and there’s a kind of badger in our spare room that I’d bodged
at the time. Turns out its snub-nosed mouth was a perfect fit for these
dentures so I balanced it on the shelf by the hearth, next to the wife’s Agatha
Christies, and used it as me test recipient. She got upset later when I left it
up there, grinning down at the television while we had our tea. ‘Honestly’, I
said to her, ‘no one’s enjoyed UK Gold as much as that badger in years!’
The next day
couldn’t be described as a resounding success, to be frank. I’m due in court in
a few weeks now, thanks to some objections and an overzealous plain clothes
policeman. But the plan worked in principle – the technique was a massive
success and I take real pride in that. Despite being spat out on to the cobbles
on numerous occasions the dentures didn’t break at all. Who’d have thought so
many toothless or partially-toothed people would be out around The Groves
shopping centre on a Wednesday lunchtime? I had my work cut out, I can tell
you. Still no actual takers, though, and the wife didn’t half grumble as she
scrubbed some of the more stubborn dried sick off the scooter’s wheel trims,
bless her. I didn’t like to go up A&E with a grubby scooter now, did I, split
lip or no split lip?
In and out in
three hours with a few stitches, which isn’t bad for our hospital and at half
term as well. Then, once we got home and had us a cup of tea and a Malted Milk
(and she nagged me yet again to move that badger back out of sight), the wife
had a brainwave. ‘Don’t they have an owner’s name etched into them or
anything?’ she chirped up as I was drifting off. Genius idea! I had a look and
lo and behold there was something. Looked like a date scratched into the tartar
inside the lower set: oh three oh five five one. On the upper set, on the inner
side of the incisors was scrawled ‘J. Stalin’. I came back in from me workshop and told the
wife.
‘He never lived
round here, did he?’ she asked, the daft cow. ‘How did a set of Joe Stalin’s
teeth find themselves discarded in dog poo corner over the end of our front
garden?’ ‘Must have been dropped by a local memorabilia collector,’ I said, ‘no
wonder I couldn’t find a match for them.’ She didn’t look convinced so I did a
google search on her phone. Yes, I know what you’re all thinking but I don’t
sit at home all day playing whist and listening to old seventy eights. I looked
up Communist memorabilia collectors in our area. A surprising number of hits,
actually. I sent a photo to each one showing the dentures in the badger’s mouth
– I like it smiling down at us on the shelf like that – and am now in the
process of playing off a few potential buyers against each other. That should cover
my legal fees at least, and I think it’s only fair, after all. It’s all the
teeth’s fault at the end of the day. I were just doing what I thought were right,
weren’t I? Here, pass us another one of them Malted Milks.
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