Yes siree, dentists and the NHS approach really does blow!

So whilst we were in Wales, we managed to secure an NHS dentist, not fantastic but a quick check around your gob to make sure it was all ok (p.s people in Wales also get FREE prescriptions, paid for by the UK Tax Payer). Due to work we moved back to the North of England and then the fun begins, this government doesn’t want people to have bad teeth and wants them to look after themselves, right, no wrong.

We spent the best part of 2 months hunting high and low for an NHS dentist, with no luck what so ever, apparently you need to register on a website and then wait for a dentist to call you, if one feels like getting in touch and has any space. So the annual check-up came around and begrudgingly we paid for a private check-up, oh my god. It would appear that I have a gold mine situated behind my teeth, either that or the Bank of England. It costs £70 minimum for a checkup, thats £3.50 for each minute that some bloke waffles at you about the state of the NHS, blah, blah, blah. Then you need to have some woman show you how to brush your teeth at a cost of £38, thats £1.90 per minute. Then if you need a filling the prices start at around £50 per filling heading up to a dizzy £70 or £80.

You even get a lecture from the friendly dentist on how Switzerland has banned amalgum fillings now, sorry pal we aint in Switzerland. On top of all that one of the first things that is discussed is you taking out a “dental plan”, now you know it makes sense, “ah you fit in to Category B, so that’s £18 to cover you just in case you need some work doing”. I’m sure that it does make sense, it’s just the fact that in this country we should have to start taking out any kind of health plan, either provide an NHS service or don’t it shouldn’t be a mix and match.

It’s just daylight robbery, I mean “at least Dick Turpin Wore a mask”, come on there is no way to justify such costs.

Eventually we got a call, 7 months after registering with the NHS website thingy, to be told that we could join a dental practice, one that only sees patients on a Wednesday (bloody part-timers). So appointments made, off I pop. Now cast your mind back (is that even possible, hold on head I’m just gonna through my mind back to the good ole days) to dentists of yonder year, well that’s where I ended up. The dentist chair was like out of the 1970’s, a hospital metal frame with a little cloth on it and a foot pump to lift or lower the chair. The gentle laying backwards motion can only be described as being shunted from behind in your car, whilst the rinse and spit sink looked as though it had seen many pigs slaughtered in the local butcher shop. Hanging from the ceiling was the world’s oldest xray machine (the ones that look like a 1950’s B-movie laser cannon, painted in a battleship grey) alongside a 1 million candle light fitting. As for the scale and polish, having to insist that the dentist wash the scaling device after it has been dropped on the floor is never a good sign.

After all this £15.90 for a checkup and xrays, so why cost so much on private then? And now NHS are introducing a wonderful new rule, bear in mind it takes you months or sometimes even years to get a dentist, well they are going for “2 strikes and you’re out”, if you cancel an appointment with less than 24 hours notice then that counts as a strike, have two of those bad boys and you are kicked off their books, go figure. Apparently according to the hand crayoned poster on the wall “last month 25 patients did not attend their appointments, costing the dentist 9 hours worth of lost time” and costing the NHS millions, mmmm I think not, try getting rid of the over priced middle managers and save a fortune more like. Now you do the math:

9 hours is 540 minutes

540 minutes divided by 25 patients equals 21.6 mins per patient

Not one to quibble (yeh right), but my appointment was delayed by 15 minutes (even though I had arrived 10 minutes early) and I was with the dentist for less than 10 minutes, so who got my other 11.6 minutes.

So back to the original point, the government want people to be slim, healthy and with good teeth, yet, you can’t get a dentist for love nor money and when you do, you can’t miss any appointments or you get booted off the list and have to go private. So I ask you what good is the NHS anyway?

We have suffered for years with a double bed, two adults and a very needy cat (who manages to steal half the bed leaving us hanging of the edge).

Enough, we thought, time to buy ourselves a King sized bed, so off we go round the showrooms, spending the best part of an hour testing mattresses (jumping on them, rolling over them, bouncing up and down on them and generally making the staff worry what we were up to), then choosing a really nice bedstead, hurrah all set so we think.

The bed arrived on Valentines Day (yup gonna test drive this puppy), so off I set with spanners and screwdrivers in hand to build the “30 minute” bed following the simplest instructions. 3 hours later and it was built, but oh there is a slight problem, the inside metal frame is 1inch narrower than the bed frame, making it impossible to fit properly, that coupled with the fact that it is rusty doesn’t make for a good start. Undeterred I placed the 4 tonne Kingsize mattress on the bed to check it out and see of there were any other problems, oh boy!

It would appear that our Kingsize (standard size) mattress, is actually 6 inches shorter than our Kingsize (standard size) bed, leaving a massive and quite frankly dangerous gap. So off to the showroom I pop, tape measure in hand and low and behold their bed had the exact same gap, WHY? Now for those of you used to British Customer Service, you can guess the response:

“Ah sir (says the manager through gritted teeth, when what she means is stop bothering me), all Kingsize mattresses are that short, it allows you to tuck in your duvet covers, plus which a pocket sprung mattress will collapse over a few months and fill the gap”

Right, so all beds are made too long and all mattresses need 6 inches to tuck a duvet in, plus a “pocket sprung mattress” guaranteed for 10 years not to collaps or lose the shape, will collapse to fill a 6 inch gap in a period of months. I don’t think so!!!!

After scouring countless stores, it would appear that only this one company, with it’s own range of beds suffer this problem. My guess is that this a set of beds built by foreign labour with a knackered old tape measure and now they have  to “flog em off” as fast as they can to unsuspecting punters. Not us though, the bed is going back and we are getting our money back (good job really cos we went and bought a proper bed from a lovelly little pine warehouse).

And now, we have a little bit of bed each, but the cat still manages to steal most of it during the night (little git).

So Valentines Day was spent on our blow up airbed from camping, romantic or not.

P.S Don’t ever try carrying a Kingsize headboard and footboard in a Suzuki jeep, it just aint big enough, you scrape your knuckles on the corners and really struggle to drive properly.