OH, I WISH I’D LOOKED AFTER ME TEETH!

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,

And spotted the dangers beneath

All the toffees I chewed,

And the sweet sticky food.

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’

When I had more tooth there than fillin’

To give up gobstoppers,

From respect to me choppers,

And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked

And the liquorice allsorts I picked,

Sherbet dabs, big and little,

All that hard peanut brittle,

My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My mother, she told me no end,

‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’

I was young then, and careless,

My toothbrush was hairless,

I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,

I flashed it about late at night,

But up-and-down brushin’

And pokin’ and fussin’

Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way

To cavities, caps and decay,

The murder of fillin’s,

Injections and drillin’s,

I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,

And I gaze up his nose in despair,

And his drill it do whine

In these molars of mine.

‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’

How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,

As they foamed in the waters beneath.

But now comes the reckonin’

It’s methey are beckonin’

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

Taken from the The Works: The Classic Collection 2008.

© Pam Ayres 2012

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