WONDER if most of us are guilty of either being unaware or forgetful of many improvements in our lives when compared to that of earlier generations.
My mother knew what hunger was; so did everyone else in her class but they emerged better educated than kids are today.
She tells of the time when she and her classmates trooped off to the Ear, Nose and Throat department of Nottingham’s General Hospital now closed for many a year.
It had been built to treat servicemen wounded in the Wars I think ,and I was also born there.
The kids were about eight-year old and obediently sat waiting for their names to be called.
As each heard their name they were led through, arms leather strapped to a seat, told to open their mouths wide.
An instrument went in and their tonsils were snipped out, without anaesthetic.
As each kid waited their turn, the child who had gone before, emerged howling, comforted by their mother holding a bloodstained handkerchief to their mouths.
My earliest recollection of a visit to the dentist was having a rubber pad slapped over my nose.
It was a suffocating sensation, as though a pillow was being held over my face.
I survived, the errant tooth did not. It was not a happy experience but I got a tanner (six pence).
Even when older I recall with distaste a dentist who had set up practice in a converted Victorian terraced house. .
His receptionist was unsmiling. When coming to check my problem out I heard his boot steps on the linoleum covered floorboards. Ah ah the good old days no klick lock flooring then.
A cross between Frankenstein and a Smithfield Market butcher, he even wore an apron like one.
His solution; rip them out. None of that poncey repair palaver. I have sympathy with a policeman friend who was ejected from his dentist’s surgery.
The practitioner had tolerated his patient having stiffened his resolve with a drink or two beforehand.
He drew the line when, in the chair, my friend gripped the dentist by his scrotum and said: ‘We’re not going to hurt each other are we?’
Also later in the military when I had to make a visite to a said dentist thought he could do the job with out an anaesthetic would not feel it he said. Later he found out when I bit his thumb only to be kicked out and find a private dentist in Detmold. A few days later he did apologize but that was too late the damage had been done
These are my thoughts as today in my much loved homeland, I try to figure out an excuse to visit my dentist.
What a contrast: The receptionist treats you with friendliness and informality. My Swedish dentist is beautiful and more affectionate than are most wives.
Now, when Coronation Street’s Hilda Ogden brought up the possibility of Percy Sugden kissing her under the mistletoe, he retorts that he wouldn’t kiss even if under anaesthetic.
Much the same kind be said for her delightful English lady assistant. Blunt needles and painful archaic dental practices are now in the dustbin of history.
That is progress but why couldn’t dentists have been kinder and more thoughtful in the past? Thank goodness attitudes towards patients have changed.
What are your experiences in the past in the dentists chair? Lets have them.
Well the next AGM is now on the 4th of August 2012 in Nottingham's pub the trip to Jerusalem same as last year with a good old meal in the same restaurant. Why the change one may ask well it is an oppos meet and just for two or three of us to leave the rest out who can not make for reasons we are back on dry land. It will also give us the chance to chew over the Xmas meet and have a good one like last year in wallop or the near area. Any comments are greatly received on the site.
So just keep looking and get your names down for the next meet.
Toodle pip Magic .
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