Anyway, on the subject of teeth. It never ceases to amaze me when people say "Oh, I'd far rather have my own", when they discover that you sleep with your grin in a glass on the bedside table. Being able to proudly boast that you have all your own teeth, also means that you have all the attendant joys that go with them. Like getting that sharp stab of pain when your cold beer gets in the hole where you should have had a filling done but were too windy to let the dentist get at you with his drill, or having a smile like a November sky, with it's beautiful shades of grey, yellow and black, no matter how you scrub with paste and brush making your gums as tender as a baby's bum.
I think one of the best days of my life, was when I went to the dentist to have six teeth filled. I must hastily say. that on no account would I have done this voluntarily, I a genuine A1 first class coward when it comes to inflicting pain on my person, but this time I had no choice, as the P.O. doctor had it down on his report that six teeth wanted filling, and the Post Office would not grant my establishment as postman unless six teeth got filled, I don't remember the doc ever looking at my teeth, apart from the usual investigation to see if I was breathing and the correct response happened after I coughed (presumably to ascertain that I could be classified postman and not postwoman), he did nothing else. Perhaps he felt that just a little extra should go down on his report to justify his position as M.O. for P.O.
Anyway, I duly presented myself, quaking, at the dental surgery, to let the gnasher inquisitor have a go at me. He was reputed to be a good workman at his job, but sadly lacking in comforting bedside manner. I had occasion to go to him once before, when a raging toothache drove me to his door, I'd been told he never turned anyone in pain away, and neither did he. One look at what must have seemed like a tortured gargoyle (my face) and he had me in the chair and tooth out in a couple of ticks. Then holding aloft the offending molar in the forceps, said in a tone of disgust, "filthy thing", and threw it over his shoulder in the general direction of the waste bin. I had the feeling that he though I'd deliberately harboured bubonic plague in my mouth, and what I'd suffered was just retribution for doing so. However, he read the report and grunted, "Right, let's have a look" and after doing so, said "You don't want any fillings". The sigh of relief from me must have sounded like I'd got a puncture, and I remember gabbling something about never having any trouble with them, when he chopped me down with "They've all got to come out, your gums are septic". I thought that a spark of human kindness broke through when he added "I could save one or two if you like", but decided he was only saving a bit of overtime for the future, so said he better take them all out. He didn't seem overjoyed at losing what could have been a lucrative income from messing about with the few he could leave in for filling etc.
Eventually, he got his own back by taking them out in two sittings, which was OK, excepting that he took out the complete left side first, top and bottom, and I went around looking like half a vampire until he took the rest out. People used to back away an put their hands up to their necks when I smiled.
The final chapter of my disassociation with Ma Nature's scourge of the cake-hole and my adoption of man's finest invention, plastic gnashers, demonstrated again my dentists efficiency and his down to earth approach to his job. I went to have the plates fitted, rejoicing, that at least I would be free from toothache, fillings, gumboils, and the description of toothless wonder which had been stuck on my since extraction day number two. The top set fitted beautifully, although I felt my mouth was full of tombstones, but the bottom set perched on the gum like a six and a half hat on a seven and a quarter head. As I gingerly tried to press the plate over the gum, he watched my efforts for a few seconds , then, as his impatience at my timid approach boiled over, grasped my jaw with his fingers on top of the teeth and his thumb beneath the chin, said "You've got to be firm with them", and crunched his fist shut like a steel vice. I'm sure my kneecaps shot up and down my shins like yo-yos and certainly the shout that burst from way back n my gullet and made me jump, must have nearly deafened him, but he never turned a hair, just said, "Like that". Mind you, he was right, they went on all right, at the expense of a fair amount of gum skin and it was a fortnight before I dare take them out to clean them. It's not so easy to be firm when you're on the receiving end, but as I said, he knew his job and the end product of a session with him resulted in you having a well fitting set of gleaming teeth, fully MOT'd.
This is more that I can say about the bods at University College Hospital, which at one time trained the future dentists of our land. I went there once, way back, and you were examined and the work that had to be done was marked out on a chart which you took to a waiting room, adjacent to the operating theatre. This only had a partition wall, which didn't reach to the ceiling, so that, while you couldn't see the men at work, you could hear everything that went on. I went in first, gave the bloke in charge my chart, and three young trainees took over my body. They sat me in the chair, strapped me round the waist, and bunged a dirty great funnel over my face, telling me to count to ten (I'd paid two bob for gas, being a coward and not wanting to know what was going on).
I remember dreaming that I was in the wolf wood up the zoo and all the wolves were howling like mad for food that they fancied as they chased me. Sounded like a lot of banshees, getting louder and louder until I realised it was me, and I was on the floor of the theatre having slid under the strap and had kicked my shoes clean off my feet. These three idiots were holding me down, laughing their heads off. I'd been in the washroom for a while, washing my mouth clear of blood, when a chap came in, looking a bit the worse for wear and said, "Was that you in the chair just now?" I said "Yes" and he said "Blimey, you should have heard yourself, two of the women waiting fainted, and some of the blokes turned green, talk about having teeth out, sounded like you were being castrated".
Afterwards I found that they'd broken two teeth level with the gums and had to go and have them extracted some time later when they went bad and started to ache. Well, they were only learners, so I couldn't moan but when people say they'd sooner have their own teeth, I silently bless the day I went for six fillings and got a set of plastic gnashers instead.
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