September 2026

Would you like to go over the border to Mexico this afternoon and have your teeth cleaned for next to nothing? Very much! I was staying with rich friends in Palm Springs last month. I have found in my travels that rich people are often the most frugal. Hence, unlike me, they have accumulated vast fortunes in their lives, a talent I admire rather than envy. As it’s not possible to transport money to the next resting place, at least I don’t think it is, I have never seen much point in hoarding it. Although, having said that, my late father insisted his credit cards were buried with him just in case. 

 So, over the border we went. A two-hour drive and short walk past the Border Patrol to Los Algodones.  It’s a lovely little Mexican town where I got an eye exam and new lenses installed in two sets of frames for a hundred dollars a pair.  Transitional…progressive…Maharishi Yogi…the works. The teeth cleaning was another forty bucks. Then, throw in an unbelievably priced tacos lunch which I treated my hosts to, and it was a relatively inexpensive day. The real treat was how excited my friends were at delivering me to these discounts and how grateful the optician and dentist seemed at getting my business. There are more opticians and dentists in Los Algodones per square foot than street vendors pushing knock off Versace bags.  

Both the optician and the dentist were very elegant women in their thirties, who treated me gingerly as if I was the resident of a very exclusive old peoples’ home. The town is a kind of discount heaven, where in relatively little time and for very little dosh you can get new teeth, hair, glasses, clothes, cheekbones. In fact, anything that needs replacing and plenty of things that don't.  

When I was a child, growing up in Henley on Thames in the 1950s, my mother was extremely diligent in taking us to visit the local dentist every year. He was from Iceland, with an unpronounceable name. The dentist had bought a small plot of land next to his house and for many years he tried to grow grapes in a climate, before global warming got going, that was certainly not suited to producing wine. He always appeared just very slightly inebriated, and his hands shook alarmingly from time to time. However, he must have done something right as I still have all my own teeth at seventy-five. 

The great advantage of a day visit to Mexico, apart from the savings, was that everything from the teeth cleaning to the lens making to the tacos lunch happened at lightning speed dispelling the idea that Mexican life moves slowly.  Viva Zapata. I can see clearly now.