Keeping on

I am so tired of cleaning my teeth every morning.

Nothing against oral hygiene, you understand, and I am most definitely against bad breath. It just goes on and on. No end in sight (though I suppose I should be grateful for that). Mouthwash, floss, toothpaste on the brush... Bottom then top, right then left. Every day.

By my calculations I have spent more than a quarter of a million minutes in front of the mirror, scrubbing away.

Four thousand plus hours. One hundred and seventy-odd days. Nearly six months.

Half a mile of dental floss.

And that's just mornings.

It's the routine I think. Same every day, in the same bathroom, same bar of soap by the washbasin. Same house, same books, same furniture. Same stuff.

One day I'll put on my coat, lock the door behind me and catch the first bus that comes along, ride to the end of the route. Then another, and another until they all run out of road. I'll take a room in a seafront boarding house, one with a view of the winter sea. I'll go to a charity shop and buy a book I've never heard of and sit by the window listening to the wind.

But I'll still have to brush my teeth.