I had avoided going near a Dentist's Surgery for over 5 years. In that time I hadn't had any trouble with my teeth - not the slightest twinge. I religiously cleaned them twice a day - most days - well, when I remembered anyway! The only thing that caused me slight distress was the brown stains on my front teeth, a legacy from the days when I was a heavy smoker.

But I decided I was pushing my luck a little. I didn't want to risk losing any teeth - after all, I wouldn't grow new ones, and the thought of wearing dentures filled me with horror. So a check-up was in order.

This was a very brave thing to do.

Even more courageous was actually showing up for the appointment!

My terror of Dentists stems from the childhood trauma of being treated by a bastard who didn't believe in local anaesthetics. I could either have gas, which gave me nightmares and made me sick, or I suffered the pain. His attitude was that dentistry would be a lot more fun without the patients. His bedside (or chairside) manner would have seemed cold and unfeeling to a Mortician.

Quaking at the knees, and trying to suppress these childhood terrors, I presented myself at the Surgery (which didn't actually have 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here' carved over the door, but that's the way I felt) like the condemned man who had just been denied a hearty breakfast.

A very nice receptionist with a beaming smile (she was a good advert for her boss) took my details and asked me to wait.

The waiting area was very spacious, very modern with potted plants everywhere. Presumably one could hide behind the huge cheeseplants and yuccas and hope the Dentist would forget you were there.

Along one wall there was an enormous aquarium with brightly coloured tropical fish swimming back and forth. The theory is that watching fish do whatever it is that fish do is very relaxing, thus taking your mind of the coming ordeal. But since one of the fish in the tank was the marine equivalent of Rambo and seemed engaged in complete genocide of all its companions, the effect was not quite as the designers hoped.

There were the usual assortment of 3-year-old magazines, which I probably wouldn't have wanted to read even if they'd been new!

So all I could do was watch the other patients.

There were seven others waiting. A harassed woman with a screaming toddler; two teenage girls who looked totally blase about the pain and suffering which would be inflicted on them; and assorted adults, all looking terrified.

The wait was an ordeal in itself. Every few minutes a buzzer would sound and the receptionist would call out a name. You could see the mass look of panic on all the faces as we prayed it wouldn't be our turn yet; then the collective sigh of relief from those who had been spared yet again; and the sheer dread, changing to a calm yet fatalistic resignation, from the unfortunate victim.

After a wait of about four days it was my turn and I was ushered along an endless corridor to another waiting area, much smaller and more spartan. From here the whine of the drills was audible, accompanied by the odd groan. Very calming sound-effects!

When I was called into the surgery, dry-mouthed and sticky-palmed, I was struck by the youth of the dentist. He didn't look much over 18, and yet I was expected to lie back in a chair and let him loose inside my head? A certificate on the wall declared him to be fully qualified and in practice for several years - so I must have been suffering from a variation of the 'You know you're getting old when the policemen look younger than you' syndrome.

The dental nurse - who looked about 14 - settled me gently into the chair and tied a huge bib around my neck. She had a soothing manner which calmed my racing pulse momentarily - until she lowered the chair so I was flat on my back, and shone a huge spotlight into my eyes.

The dentist started his excavations, poking and prodding with his sharp pointy thing (it felt like a pickaxe), peering into his little mirror, muttering incomprehensible phrases to the nurse like 'lower back right 4 occluded'. Whatever that meant, it was obviously not complimentary, because he then announced I needed four fillings and a scale-and-polish. And he had time to do them now.

He still had his arms buried in my mouth up to the elbow, so my protest that 'maybe it could wait a while, I was really quite busy at the moment, how about making another appointment, like in several years time?' came out as a strangled gurgle.

First I had to endure the scrape-and-polish. A hammer and chisel were needed to remove the stubborn plaque that clung to my gnashers, and then the sandblaster, removing the ugly stains and giving me vast expanses of brilliant white.

This unpleasantness was just a warm-up. Then we proceeded to the really nasty part.

The nurse produced a large needle - the size you would expect to be used on an elephant - and inserted it into my jaw at strategic places. Over and over again. Each time I could feel it penetrating deep into my body and I wondered if it would protrude out the other side.

And then the waiting, while the drug took effect. Slowly my face started to tingle. Then it went numb. My tongue felt six times too big. My lips went all floppy. My gums disappeared completely.

The Dentist commenced his fiendish work by treating my mouth like a Tardis. He stuffed the entire contents of his surgery into my gob. Cotton wool pads to fill up every crevice, a vacuum cleaner to remove stray dribble (and any chunks of me that got sliced off by accident), a periscope so he could see into the nooks and crannies, and - THE DRILL!

I won't go into details about what actually happened, because you are all sensitive souls, and anyway I will probably faint at the memory. Just think of the film Marathon Man and you will know what it was like.

Suffice to say that despite the injections, I felt every jab, and the noise was enough to make a lion tremble; that shrieking, whining sound as the drill skids across the enamel set my teeth on edge. The result was several large craters in teeth I had considered perfectly sound.

These craters were filled with polyfilla and yet more ironmongery; clamps to compress the fillings into place. The fact that they not only tightened on my teeth but took a vice-like grip on my gums didn't seem to bother the dentist. Nor did the fact that the nurse was being a little over-zealous in her use of the hoover, and threatening to suck my tongue out along with all the debris!

There was another long wait while the concrete set, during which the dentist kept up a barrage of smalltalk - although how he expected me to answer with three tons of metal filling my orifice I don't know.

Finally he started to unload my mouth. It was like a conjuror's act as item after item was pulled out - I expected him to produce a string of flags or a bunch of flowers! I could only pray that he wouldn't leave anything nasty lurking in a crevice; I had no way of telling because apart from a generalised throb of agony I had no feeling in the lower part of my head at all.

He declared himself satisfied with his work and it was time to rinse my mouth out.

How humiliating! With my lips and tongue out of action, attempting to spit the vile blood-stained liquid out was a failure - it trickled out of my mouth, down my chin and onto the bib.

The nurse patronisingly wiped my face with a tissue, as if I were a geriatric cripple, and I was allowed to go. At last! But not without being given a jolly leaflet with colour pictures that told me, in words of one syllable, how to clean my teeth efficiently. A nice bit of light reading to take my mind off the ordeal on the journey home.

That evening I was so frozen-faced I couldn't eat (dreadful!) I could hardly talk (unusual for me) and I drooled like a senile dog.

And they wonder why people put off going to the dentist for five years!

The Diesel's Dump web pages and all the articles on it are copyright © Fi Craig 1996-2012.

The art on the Diesel's Dump site is by Robin Grenville Evans, a professional artist and cartoonist.
See a selection of his work, and contact him about commissions, at http://www.grenville-evans.co.uk/index.html.