Title: Fin

Author: Lucinda Birch

In: Sport 17: Spring 1996

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, November 1996, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 17: Spring 1996

The Teeth Dream

The Teeth Dream

There were wire braces on my teeth. The insides of my lips were torn, my tongue could feel the little shreds of skin and taste the blood. My teeth had to be straightened quickly, within a week, I can't remember why. Something to do with a wedding I think. The wires had to be tightened every hour, my teeth groaned and ached. Then they were clamped and tied together, top to bottom. I couldn't talk, I couldn't eat, I was going to starve. I bashed out my teeth with a hammer. And then the pain was gone.

One day, tired of wrestling with my ungainly rod, I walked down the beach as far as I could go. As far as the river which sliced through the gravel and linked the sea with a vast shallow lake. Walking on the round stones was difficult, they rolled from under my feet almost as if they were alive. They scraped and clunked and groaned and whistled. I sat by the river, rubbed my bashed ankles and threw stone missiles into the flashing water. Glancing into the stream I thought I saw a small eel close to the bank with its head stuck under a rock. I looked closer. It was a lamprey (fig. 3). The lamprey is a parasite; page 110 jawless, scaleless and limbless. Instead of a jaw it has on its head a large round sucker armed with rows of sharp pointed teeth. With this it attaches itself to living fish, rasps holes through their skin with its toothed tongue, and sucks their blood. The lamprey in the river had clamped itself on to a stone and held fast against the current, swaying like a strange tubular seaweed. On the spur of the moment I plunged my arm into the frigid water, grabbed the fish around the middle and pulled it out, stone and all. I carried my prize back to the bach by the rock attached to its face. The lamprey was considered a delicacy by the Romans in 70 AD, and eaten in excess by Henry I, King of England, who died of a surfeit of lampreys in 1135. I thought it might make a passable dinner. Hey, no bones! He disagreed. He would sooner eat snails. Raw. The famous potted lamprey pies of Worcester made little impression on him. He thought it was fun though, to cut the lamprey's body away, piece by piece, until only the head was left, still stubbornly stuck to its stone.