WHEN the second of my front two teeth in my lower jaw dropped out after months of waggling about, I looked in the mirror and thought: "Ah, sure who’ll notice?”

It was, to be fair, a quite small gap unless I hadn’t put in the other false tooth that had become painful rubbing up alongside the jiggling one.

Well, not the fake tooth exactly – impossible – but the gum. That morning I therefore hadn’t immediately clipped it in by its metal arms to the other teeth, so I was in fact saying fine to a smile that had two gaping holes at the centre.

Now while that is winsome and winning in a seven-year-old, in a woman of a certain age it is, frankly, grotesque.

That I couldn’t immediately see that was positive proof that I had finally gone fully native – at one with my fellow peasants in La France Profonde.

Between us we barely muster a full set of gleaming teeth and could pass as extras in a medieval costume drama without need for blacking out any day of the week.

Expensive dental care in France and, I suppose, to put it delicately, lack of personal care, means teeth in the boondocks come bottom of the list of priorities.

(Fancy farm equipment comes top.)

When the first one went several years ago on one of those hard, tasteless toasts served with aperos, I thought my world had collapsed.

With a scarf wrapped around my face I begged the local dentist for an emergency appointment with tears close to spilling from my eyes.

The receptionist, not a happy clappy soul as I’ve discovered through subsequent treatment, looked at me with some boredom, saying: "What emergency?"

Mortified I slid the scarf from my mouth. She shrugged and gave me a look, which basically said: You’ll have to do better than that cherie.

Jeez, how many teeth have to be ejected before you’re an emergency around here?

"I have a book launch in Scotland in a week’s time," I cried. "I’m going to be on TV. You can’t let me go like this…"

Finally I’d got her attention. "What’s it about?" she said with a suspicious frown.

"Here," I lied. "How wonderful it is and how marvellous you French have been to me."

Ten minutes later I was in the dentist’s chair. Three days later, during which I received no visitors nor exited the house, I had a new tooth at the startling cost, if I remember rightly, of €500 – or around £400.

No wonder they go toothless here.

Without sickening you further in this sorry tale, it is just as well my bone is so eroded that I can’t have crowns or implants, or I’d be destitute as well as toothless.

The two most expensive items in our fabulous health system are teeth and eyes.

Covering the extra costs with insurance, beyond our limited health card return, is outrageously expensive.

It stands to reason. With luck most of us won’t need to claim for health problems year after year – but teeth, and eventually dwindling eyesight, are potential continuous claims.

So used have I become to bad, missing, stained teeth, that when the odd stylish visitor arrives with a full, brilliant, real, white set, I find myself talking to the teeth in total fascination.

I notice the delineation of the gum over each arched molar; the pink healthy gums; the easy way they smile without hand in front of mouth.

I privately marvel at the perfection of their mouths and try not to ask if their teeth are real, screwed in or implants.

When they leave, and I’m back talking to the mouths of my neighbours, it’s as if a light has been extinguished; a whole culture wiped out in a smile.

Anyway, that aside: When Miriam turned up with a dozen bantam eggs from her partner’s ex wife, as she does, I pointed to my mouth.

"What?" she said, peering as I grimaced at her.

"The tooth’s bloody gone. Finally." I pointed to the obvious gap.

She did that shrug. Her eyebrows shrugged too.

"And?"

"It doesn’t look that bad really, does it?" I suggested.

"And once I stick the other one back in, it’ll be fine, won’t it?"

"I can’t see a problem," she said with a slightly bored air.

"I mean, who’ll see you around here?"

The worrying part of the conversation was that I nodded at her wisdom…indeed I may even have given her a wide smile of thanks. A gappy, wide smile of thanks.

That was more than a week ago. I haven’t phoned for an emergency appointment. I am wearing the other tooth so the gap is really not that big; not really. I have tiny teeth.

It’s not even a question of money, although I’ve spent it all tarting up the house.

It’s recognition that, Miriam is right, who’ll see me around here?

Stop. Have I really just written that? If I accept that fact then I’ll let every bloody tooth fall out and go nowhere outside my immediate neighbourhood.

Plus the dog needs inoculating and I’ll have to smile at the vet; the only handsome man in the village.

Ring. Ring.