We have noticed that our front teeth feel unusual. This discomfort has revived within us the old suspicion that our dentist plants ‘cavity seeds’ in our teeth when we submit to a cleaning. We want to trust our dentist. He has a firm handshake, after all, and the chirpy hygienists in his employ are ever-green and solid as a rock, year in and year out. Perhaps we are eating too many sweets. Perhaps the constant, surging wash of coffee and tea is bearing our enamel out to sea. Perhaps our riparian salad days are salad days indeed, and we are in our bitter dotage, forced inland to some filthy city flat near a root canal. Perhaps we will now drink an MGD and watch Elimidate.