I'm being held to ransom by the Tooth Fairy

(And I have more free ebooks for you...)

This week, after a lengthy and — let’s be honest — dramatic AF wait, I’m pleased to announce that Max finally lost his first tooth.

I’m slightly less happy, on the other hand, to announce that, here in the village, the going rate for the tooth fairy is apparently £10 for a first tooth.

Ten. Pounds.

I kid you not.

At first, I thought Max was just, well, at it when he told me this. “£10 per tooth?” I snorted. “That’ll be right.”

But it turns out it is right: or at least according to the parents of other kids in his class, who confirm that, yes, the Tooth Fairy has herself a pretty good hustle going on in our village. I suspect she’s probably in league with the Elf on the Shelf, who arrived in most households here (with the notable exception of ours…) on December 1st, complete with balloon arches, ‘North Pole breakfasts’ and a selection of gifts which made the whole thing feel a lot like Christmas itself, to be honest.

So, it’s that kind of place, basically; which I suppose makes it a little less surprising that the Tooth Fairy would turn out to be taking a similarly OTT approach here.

The problem with inventing imaginary beings who play a role in your child’s life, though, is that, once you’ve allowed the child in question to buy into their existence, you’re basically at their mercy, really. I mean, how would I explain that the Tooth Fairy might bring all of Max’s friends £10 for their first tooth, but she’s only going to bring Max himself £2 — which seems to be the going rate for the rest of the country? No, seriously: HOW?!

You can’t, can you? There is no logical reason that a literal FAIRY would discriminate in this way. So the Tooth Fairy has us over the proverbial barrel, really. We’re at her mercy. We’re the Tooth Fairy’s bitches now, and ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.

I couldn’t think of a non-gruesome way to illustrate a post about a tooth falling out, so here’s a photo of Max and I on the beach in Caithness last October instead. You’re welcome.

Now that the Tooth Fairy has found her way to our door, though, I have another question:

What am I supposed to do with the teeth?

Other than putting them inside a plastic Kinder Egg and keeping them forever, obviously, which is what I did with my OWN lost teeth, having firmly declared that the Tooth Fairy was welcome to come leave me some money (It was 50p in my day. This were all fields, then…), but she’d have to also leave me the teeth, thanks, because they were MY teeth, and no one was taking them from me.

(In retrospect, this wasn’t a great deal for the Tooth Fairy, all things considered. And, at some point, I must have lost the Kinder egg, because I’ve absolutely no idea what happened to it. Let’s just hope some poor child didn’t stumble upon it at some point, huh, because that would’ve been a pretty gruesome Kinder ‘surprise’…)

What do you do with them, though? Because it feels wrong to just throw it away somehow (I felt unexpectedly emotional when it finally came out…), but kind of gruesome to keep it. What did you do? What do normal people do in these situations?

Other news from this week…

• I did not, unfortunately, become a TikTok sensation. Actually, I only ever had that one order from my TikTok shop, so it looks like that’s NOT, in fact, going to be how I pay off my debts and become rich. Shame.

• I went out in just a light jacket yesterday, rather than my Big Coat. This is HUGE news for those of us here in Scotland, who had no summer at all last year, and are really hoping for just a little bit of sunlight sometime soon. Pray for us…

• After putting off my eye test for … let’s just say ‘a while’ … I finally went to the optician a couple of weeks ago, and am now the proud owner of a brand new pair of glasses AND two pairs of prescription sunglasses which — and I’m not joking here — have literally changed my life. Seriously: I stopped ordering contact lenses during the pandemic, because we never went anywhere, so I’d been making do with wearing my old glasses at home. I refuse to wear my glasses anywhere other than around the house, though (because, vanity…), which basically means I’ve just been walking around blind this entire time. But now … now I can SEE things again! Why did no one tell me how amazing this would be?!

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Book News

In more book-specific news, the ebook version of Cozy Scottish Mystery is currently free, and available at this link, along with a selection of other free ebooks…

… you’ll find free romance books, including The Ghostwriter of Christmas Past and Cool Girl Summer here…

… and Amy Rafferty’s Christmas Romance on Plum Island is not free, but is available here. Happy reading!

Until next week, folks,