Remember that scene in Marathon Man?

I'm sometimes asked the difference between life in London and rural Brittany and one thing that springs to mind is a trip to the dentist.

I always thought there was a universal rule that when a patient lifts up their left arm it signalled that the patient wanted the dentist to stop. I also thought that fillings came together with a pain-killing injection. That is until I went to our local dentist.

I suffered pain. There was no stopping him and his drill. There was no injection or numbing lotion and it hurt.

This happened last summer and I blocked it from my mind until yesterday, when I began to get a tooth-ache. There is no way I am returning to this chap and I made a few enquiries about other dentists. It appears that dentists here do not really approve of injections and prefer you to have several visits of a few minutes at a time.

Why that is I do not know. But I'm going to wait until I'm back in the UK for a quick trip and see someone then - if I can. Judging by recent UK news reports dentists with time for new patients are a rare breed.