People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

And people with false teeth shouldn't eat! My dad, bless him, has false teeth. Lots of people have dentures, some sets are excellent and you hardly notice the user has a mouthful of plastic. My dad is never one to shirk the opportunity to exaggerate and he has taken on the role of false-teeth wearer with great gusto! If you could imagine a caricature of somebody trying to eat with false teeth, that's my Dad. It makes mealtimes particularly pleasant - to the point that I have to leave the table as soon as I've finished because I'd be sick if I stuck around to bear witness. Last night he was crunching roasted, salted chick peas (chick peas again) for about an hour while watching telly last night.

He also does everything in slow motion: when he takes a mouthful of food (and it's always a HUGE mouthful), it sort of happens as slowly as possible, from lifting the fork/spoon, to him lowering his head and finally to him opening his mouth wide enough to accommodate half a plate's worth of pasta/veg/meat/rice. It's truly amazing.

I'm often woken up by him washing his dentures before he goes to bed. He stores them in this plastic container thing and washes them, first under running water with a brush, then by rattling them in the container with some other sort of solution. Then he takes himself to his bedroom where I can hear him rustling the numerous bags of prescription medicines, followed by the pop, pop, pop of him bursting blister packs and organising his 20 pills for the next morning.

I love my parents dearly. I love them so much that it has always really hurt to think of them not being around anymore. But there has to be something that you really can't cope with about the people you love the most - with me, it's my slo-mo Dad and his teeth (and his temper, and his lack of understanding of English, and his Dad-logic).

Of course, I blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. If it hadn't been for their appalling management of the economy and theft of pension funds, house prices wouldn't have escalated so much (100% in 4 years compared with salary increases of about 8% over the same period), I'd have been able to move out to a place of my own by now. I was only supposed to be here for 6 months and now it feels like I'm trapped here for ever. Nice.