When I was a wee small child, living in Bishopton (A village in Scotland), I had a lovely Mars Bar for my supper. I was all ready for bed in my pink nighty and was sitting on our brown 70s carpet happily chewing my way through my treat. Is it me or have Mars Bars got smaller? Perhaps I have got bigger.

Anyway, as I chewed my lovely confectionery delight, to my astonishment and horror I came upon a nut! A nut in my Mars Bar! Well I was stunned and not a little upset. For you see I do so hate nuts of any kind. I’m not allergic to them, but I really do not like them!  Through caramel, nougat and tears I explained to my mum that there was a nut in my Mars Bar.  She didn’t believe me.

Really truly there was a nut in my mars bar and I cried some more about it, until my mum told me to stop being daft and just swallow it if there really was a nut in there.

Now I was not ordinarily a disobedient child. I was usually very good. But I had to draw a line when it came to a nut in my Mars Bar.  With all the guile and cunning of a 4 year old, I deftly removed the offending nut from my sticky mouth and promptly wiped it onto the carpet. Hooray!

Free of the nutty horror that had besieged me, I was left to enjoy the rest of my somewhat melted Mars Bar. Bedtime soon roled around after that and as I turned at the lounge door to say goodnight to my parents, I smiled (angelically of course) a big toothy smile.  The look on my mum’s face was a picture.  There was a gap. A little suspiciously nut sized gap in my front teeth.

My mum assumed that I had swallowed my ‘nut’ like a good girl but as the tears started to flow again (I had worked out that the tooth fairy probably wouldn’t be visiting me if I had no tooth to put under the pillow) I managed to splutter out my confession about wiping the ‘nut’ on the carpet.

Several minutes of frantic scrabbling around on the sticky carpet where I had been sitting produced the gooey tooth.  My first ever tooth for the tooth fairy.

After that I was always very careful about sticky sweets and toffees as they seemed to want to pull out my teeth at every turn. I even lost a further 2 teeth in later years as a result of mint humbugs. We were in France on a camping holiday as I recall….

Anyway, the moral of this story is to listen to your children.  If they say there is a nut in what should otherwise be a nut free delicacy, get them to spit the thing out. The tooth fairy won’t thank you if she has to wait for it to come through after it’s been swallowed!

p.s. For parents of light sleeping children, or children who are afraid of fairies, I can recommend getting a tiny little tooth bag (red velvet is lovely) to put the tooth in. Don’t slip it under the pillow, put it on the mantle piece or coffee table with a letter from your child explaining what has happened to their tooth. Did they lose it at school? Was it wobbly for a long time? Did it get knocked out playing football? The tooth fairy then has all evening after they have gone to bed to raid your purse for suitable loose change to replace the tooth with.