The only woman who can make me lie

With a heavy heart, I have just conducted my biannual lying session. I hate that I have to do this. I am an honest person driven to the extremes of fib-telling by a situation that I can see no other way out of.

Every time I find myself in this situationI search my soul for a better way out. But there just is no other way. I have to lie. I have to lie when I sit down in the dental hygienist’s chair and she asks me the question: ‘Have you been flossing?’ I do not understand why it should be that a woman in a white coat holding a tooth poker can drive a good person to perjure themselves.

I do not understand — and I don’t think I ever will — why the dental hygienist can reduce me in three seconds flat to a state of moral bankruptcy in which I am prepared to trot out a load of old codswallop.