White fillings

"How much is a white one?" I asked my dentist after he stuck a very painful needle into my gums. I hadn't expected that, head in the council clouds, forgot to take my Rescue Remedy didn't I?

Fillings are free under the NHS, which is great, fantastic. A few years ago I shuddered on that dentist chair, not least because of fear of needle. A big, fat metal molar was awaiting me because the other one had fallen out.

With all the makeover programmes on tv, I suddenly associated this metal filling with being poor not skint and normal. I didn't want to be poor. I didn't want to feel it, taste it, be reminded of it everytime I opened my mouth. I thought fuck it and paid the price of a white one. The overdraft was beyond my control now anyway. My big, fat molar suddenly took on great symbolic value. My gold tooth is testament that I am not rich, but I'm quite fond it nonetheless. After all, if the price of gold goes up, I have something to pawn....

My white tooth was very expensive for me because with the Foca's maintenance and excluding sums set aside for water, electric, gas, tv, internet etc bills, my son and I had a little under £70 a week to live on. Less than £10 a day between us. I couldn't manage it, particularly if there was a birthday party to buy a present for, or I wanted to take my son to see his grandparents. A white filling? Well, it's the stuff dreams are made of, isn't it?

I used the overdraft facility still in place from when I was working even though I reined in everything in to keep it under control. Organic food was the first casuality of my life on benefits. There have been tons of others but we're in a recession now so everyone, bar the bankers apparantly, are feeling the 'pinch'.

Today, with hardship grants from doing my Masters wiping out the debt and tax credit paybacks paying off a new overdraft, I still appear to have my son's full maintenance payments, despite informing the benefits office. This will go down when the foca's wife has his second baby. I'm hoping the state doesn't whip it back.

The tooth cost a little more than my weekly income support allowance. £60. A metal filling is £45. My white filling was actually worth £85. I got a discount to encourage me to get it, the dentist told me because "it's a front tooth and metal will not look nice infront of your white molar. Behind it, it doesn't matter."

I don't know if my getting my son's full maintenance is a 'mistake' and next April the treasury will claw back every penny it has "overpaid me". That is my son's money, which enables me not to ask the Foca for anything. Not Beavers, not the music lessons I will give my son when it's his turn on the waiting list. I don't have to rely on his family for clothes for my boy. I can do this aswell as be the tooth fairy.

There are many things I can't afford or justify, like many people. But life is not as hard as before, not as hard as the stigmum I occasionally bump into who doesn't have a bank account, never mind an overdraft facility and whose foca drinks his maintenance contributions. The income support is "mine" (and the first thing to go when I get a job, followed by housing benefit). Thanks to the "full" maintenance, I can afford to go to go the cinema now and then. Can make a decision over a small hugely symbolic white filling thankfully not that often.

I've told you all this because as I've come home, I've been scanning yesterday's Guardian. Mr Will Merrick from Cheshire has written a letter about MP's expenses, for there are many who are up in arms they have to pay back anything at all.

"Any politician who appeals against a judgement that they should pay back some of the expenses they have claimed should consider the plight of poorer families who, if overpaid by the state, have such no right of appeal. Ignorance of the rules, or even of the fact they they have been overpaid at all, is no defence in "benefit fraud". If it is decided that repayment of some expenses would be an unreasonable demand to make politicians then perhaps the same standards could be applied to all the citizens of this country."

Thanks Mr Merrick. I shall keep this clipping in case the Treasury come knocking asking for my son's money back.

(and yes Lorna Wright from Essex, a food allowance for MPs??????? As it is the Treasury canteen in subsidised (I was taken on a date there!). Does this mean they don't have to pay for their food at all??? On their salaries????

"I am looking forward to parliament passing a law to give every woman, man and child in this country a £400 monthly food allowance, " she says. "After all, as Mr Cameron has told us, "We're all in this together".")

Hear hear!