some really good stuff: sweets that stained your teeth bright red — well, technically, not your teeth, just the plaque, but the result was often the same. It took a few days good brushing to get it off. Well, most of it anyway. He had effervescent tablets that turned the canteen drinking water into that exact same pink mixture that the dentist gave you to rinse your mouth out after scraping around inside, and guaranteed to make the other kids splutter and spit it out when the taste slowly percolated through and met the memory of their last checkup. Then there was the event that became the rite of passage into our group of misfits and outcasts: making a mould of your teeth. It was inevitable that one