Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Any organization that's got something going called the "Live.Learn.Laugh Programme" is getting our support. And with avian 'flu drawing closer by the hour, we need all the mirth we can get these days. Especially now that the parrot is dead!

Anyway, the "Live.Learn.Laugh Programme" is a partnership of Unilever and the World Dental Federation, also know as the FDI. This is the global representative body for the dental profession with member associations in 137 countries and headquarters in Ferney-Voltaire, close to Geneva. To help expand its worldwide projects in places as far apart as Austria and the Sudan, the FDI is hiring and if you possess a background in administration, communication, marketing, social science or public health, and "have excellent speaking and writing skills in English and French, Spanish or any other language," they'll be happy to hear from you.

Apart from the laudable emphasis on living, learning and laughing, the FDI gets our backing because any group that promotes oral health touches a nerve here. An unfortunate encounter between Rainy Day's front teeth and a hurley many, many years ago on the playing fields of Munster led to an odyssey of misery, much of which could have been avoided if an awareness of basic dental care had existed in that place at that time. But it didn't and the price of a small farm has since been invested in extractions, fillings, crowns and implants, which makes smiling all the more painful, but the memory of all those hours in the dentist's chair can only make one laugh at the absurdity of it all. So, brush regularly and wear a gum shield if you go hurling.