“Why doesn’t jelly set if you put kiwi in it?”

IT IS Monday morning, and I wake up, heart hammering, in bed.

I probe my gums with a panicked tongue, chased by a dream in which I’m singing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz, while my teeth dissolve like Alka-Seltzer in water.

One by one, they fizz and dissolve in my mouth, so that by the time I reach the line, “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true”, all my teeth have gone and I am quite distraught.

I sit up, heart still hammering. I need to shake off this dream and its unsettling soundtrack. I get up, enter bathroom and begin fraught examination of teeth.

I open wide. Upfront: a reasonably white, straight configuration — for which blessing God compensated by giving me what’s down the back. Down back, all is rubble; many fillings, three root canals, one crown.

Down back, it is a delicate situation.

Probing with my tongue, I discover each tooth in its rightful place. All is in order. My heart slows as thoughts of a toothless future begin to recede.

I bounce downstairs two at a time: losing, then finding your teeth is remarkably, unaccountably mood-boosting.

“All is well,” I think, making tea, “it’s Monday, it’s raining, the dog has pissed in the porch, but I have my teeth.”

In a spirit of cheerful curiosity I open my lap-top and Google “crumbling teeth dreams”. My search is interrupted by the phone ringing.

It is my mother.

“How are you, love?” she says.

I describe the strange euphoria which I seem to have derived from losing then finding my teeth.

“Glad you’re in good form, love.”

“But now I’m Googling ‘crumbling teeth dreams’.”

My mother advises against this exercise.

“I mean, do you really want to know what crumbling teeth dreams mean? You’re only going to find something that will upset you.”

“Here it is,” I say, “Dream interpretation: falling teeth.”

“One of these days something in our heads will short-circuit,” she warns. “We’re overloading our brains with information we don’t need — never mind the fact that we’re outsourcing our memories to Google.”

“Socrates thought humans would outsource their memories by writing things down on scrolls,” I say. “Before scrolls, people remembered everything in their heads.”

“Oh for just a scroll,” she says, sounding cross with Socrates. “Socrates could remember everything in his head because he didn’t have people coming at him left, right and centre, bombarding him with endless amounts of useless information.”

“I mean,” she continues, “yesterday Freddie told me why jelly won’t set if you put kiwi fruit in it.”

“That is highly specific information,” I say.

“Well, I made jelly for the grandchildren with kiwi in it and it didn’t set, so he looked it up on his iPhone. I’d like to see Socrates coping with this sort of thing.”

“Why doesn’t jelly set if you put kiwi in it?”

“My life is none the richer for knowing the answer to that question,” she says, “and your life will be none the richer for knowing what crumbling teeth dreams mean.”

“The website is instructing me to become my own dream interpreter and oracle, and engage my intellect, imagination, and intuition,” I say.

“God, how ghastly,” she says.

“It says here that dreaming about crumbling teeth could represent a costly compromise or decision… or signify that my life is falling apart.

“Dreaming of crumbling teeth could be my subconscious telling me that what was once stable and long-standing — such as my marriage, for example, might well be unstable and subject to change.”

“Rubbish,” she says, “if anything, it’s your subconscious telling you to go to the dentist for a check-up. When did you last go to the dentist?”

10am. Dreams come true at the kitchen table: a filling falls out while eating toast. This is a monstrous inversion of The Wizard of Oz lyric, I feel. It is also frightening proof of the maxim, ‘Your mother is always right’.

Life is stranger than fiction, reader, life is stranger than fiction.