It was only as the pot-bellied stove started to give off a noxious odour, that Muggalby realised what he had done.   “I eef, I oot em in the ove!” he said.   Which meant, “My teeth, I put them in the stove!”

On another occasion his dentures were returned to him, however.   Muggalby’s latest set of dentures had been missing for two days, when he received an angry phone call from one of his private clients.   He had installed an indoor toilet at their house that Saturday, now they complained that it was blocked up.

Muggalby assured them he would hurry right over to fix the toilet free of charge.   Since he didn’t want them making a fuss in case it got back to the council that he was moonlighting.

Half an hour later Muggalby was busily plunging away in the toilet bowl, when up came the obstruction: a bright pink and white object.   “I eef!” he said in delight.   Which meant, “My teeth!”

Myrtle, however, was less than enthusiastic, when her husband displayed his recovered teeth to her.   “If you put those things back into your mouth, I’m leaving you!” she shrieked.

“I eef!” protested Muggalby.   He didn’t understand why he should throw away a perfectly good set of dentures, when a new pair would cost him a few hundred dollars.

As Muggalby became notorious for his missing molars, he started to be teased by his workmates, who thought it was screamingly funny.   Unfortunately Muggalby had no sense of humour and would become spitting mad.   Literally spitting mad, since a defect in his saliva glands meant that when he became angry or upset his mouth would almost overflow with saliva, which he spat out in great globs to clear his mouth.

One day on the way home from work he was spitting mad after his workmates had hardly let up on him all day.   As his mouth rushed full of saliva, he leant his head out the driver’s window of his Nissan Pintara and unleashed a mighty burst onto the bonnet of a car going in the opposite direction.

“Ot a ay!” said Muggalby as he stepped into the house.

“Have you taken out your teeth before getting into the house?” demanded Myrtle.

“O ere ill ere,” said Muggalby.   Which meant, “No, they’re still there.”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” insisted Myrtle.

Shrugging, he reached up to take out his dentures to show her.

“That’s only the bottom set,” she said, looking in disgust at the false teeth.

“Oh oh!” he said, realising that he must have spit out the top set onto the bonnet of the passing car.   No wonder the driver was so upset, thought Muggalby.

Muggalby’s molars kept going missing over the next twelve years and as his wife complained at his funeral, “He must have spent thousands of dollars on replacement sets of false teeth!”

After his death at the age of seventy-two, Myrtle Muggalby sold or gave away all of her late husband’s belongings, keeping only his last set of dentures as a memento of him.   As she explained to her sister, “His false teeth are what I remember best about Mick, so they’ll remind me of him better than anything else.”

Myrtle had the dentures silver plated, so that she could keep them on display upon the mantelpiece.   However, she is unable to show them to you, since a week or so after they were plated, the false teeth went missing.

THE END