23. The Oomy Goolie Bird

You've all heard of the legendary Oomy Goolie bird* who flew backwards, not, as popular belief would have it, to keep the dust out of it's eyes, but because it was not interested in where it was going. It just wanted to see where it had been

This attitude towards life applies, with equal intensity, to a lot of us humans who are fascinated by the past.

The American tourist, who ain't got much history behind him, is probably the most afflicted person in the world with the Oomy Goolie outlook. Not that you can blame him, after all, if all your historical heroes wore six-guns and were buried up Boot Hill you'd be interested in a bit of past culture.

Anyway, this pre-occupation in what's gone before has led to a new sport. Graveyard Jogging or the Cemetery Stroll.

I am an enthusiastic Tombstone Trotter and there's nowt that keeps me more physically fit or mentally alert than an hour or two around the parish church allotments. Mainly they're on the side of a hill which keeps the muscles active and deciphering the inscriptions on the older stones keeps the brain alive.

Memorial inscriptions are naturally and generally of  religious trend but now and then appears the humour which is part of the human jig-saw. Or a descriptive piece telling exactly how the person concerned died. 

A good example of this is in the Salem Baptist Church graveyard at Speen, a small village in Bucks. Its read simply - "John Cartney, who was killed falling from his cart. 1838."

So what? I hear you mutter to each other.

Well this plain statement immediately takes you back in time to a quieter age, away from the horror of a six lane pile up, the motor-way maniac's disregard of adverse conditions, the utter frustration of being caught in a seven-mile tail-back from some road works. You're back in the days of horse drawn traffic, stacks of manure for the garden, time to breathe and the only traffic on the road is the horse and cart in front of you sedately clip-clopping home after a hard day's work in the fields. 

Thoughts of Gray's Elegy** spring to the mind, "The ploughman homeward plods his weary way" etc, and you are refreshed in mind and body. 

Then what happens? The bloke in front falls off his cart and kills himself. Or the horse treads on him and kills him.

You're back to square one and wish you hadn't read his flipping inscription.

There's a similar type of inscription in the grounds of St Mary's, the parish church of Harrow. This tells of the RAILWAY TRAIN and the dire consequences of getting in the way of it. The bloke*** who suffered these certainly had nothing to do with the inscription but somebody wanted the world to know and had it put on stone in detail. Possibly with the view of stopping the RAILWAY TRAIN from coming through Harrow as this happened in the days before Metro-land.

Some inscriptions are unintentionally funny in their mis-statements as are these two:

"Here lies the body of Thomas Vernon

Only surviving son of Admiral Vernon"

and

"Underneath this sod lies John Round

Who was lost at sea and never found"

Others are deliberately funny. Here's a couple from Cheltenham. The first, dated 1825, reads:

"Here lies John Higgs

A famous man for killing pigs

For killing pigs was his delight

Both morning, afternoon and night

Both heats and colds he did endure

Which no physician could ere cure

His knife is laid, his work is done

I hope to heaven his soul is gone"

Source:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178703/Japanese-tourists-flock-Cheltenham-grave-obscure-C19th-pig-killer-John-Higgs.html

The second, dated 1769, is about a blacksmith:

"My sledge and hammer lies declined

My bellows pipe has lost it's wind

My forge is extinct, my fire's decayed

And in the dust my vice is laid

My coal is spent, my iron is gone

My nails are drove, my work is done"

Source: https://www.francisfrith.com/blog/the-village-blacksmith

There's a good inscription on a stone at Bromsgrove, Worcs, for a chap named Knott. A good pun is always good reading:

"Here lies a man who was Knott born

His father was Knott before him

He lived Knott, and did Knott die

Yet underneath this stone he doth lie

Knott christened, Knott begot

And here he lives and yet was Knott"

No matter where you go you'll come across the Knockers. Here's one about a miser buried in Dorchester Abbey:

"Here lies one who for medicine would not

Give a little gold, so his life was lost

I fancy that he'd wish to live again

Did he but know how much his funeral cost"

And another about a woman buried in Bideford churchyard:

"Here lies the body of Mary Sexton

Who pleased many a man but never vexed one

Not like the woman who lies under the next stone"

Nasty!

There must be thousands of pert inscriptions around the country so join the army of graveyard joggers and give free reign to your Oomy Goolie outlook. Investigate the past and enjoy the humour of these long dead poets.

I shall be very happy to print any authentic inscriptions that any of you have seen. Send 'em in to the Editor and I'll devote a page to them under the heading of Tombstone Trotters Gazette or Oomy Goolie Investigations. 

Signing off with the most famed of all inscriptions:

"Under this sod lies another"

Notes:

* I've no idea where the flying backward reference actually comes from, but there was a joke about the Oomagoolie bird, so named as it had very short legs, and every time it landed it squawked........

** 'Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray 1750/1. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

*** I must have stopped and read this inscription every time we walked through St Mary's churchyard. It's the tombstone of  Thomas Port, 1805-1838. For the full gory details, see the attached:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Harrow_rail_accident

I remember being interested in another stone, I think, round the back of the church with a skull & crossbones or similar, but, at 30-plus years distance, I can't recall, or find, anything else about it. Then there was the occasion when the famous Peachey tomb (see the links below) was nowhere to be found.....like properly actually disappeared. 

https://darkestlondon.com/tag/harrow-on-the-hill/
https://harrowonline.org/2016/09/28/the-story-behind-john-peacheys-tomb/

We carry on the Tombstone Trotting tradition. It was intriguing to find the tomb (a not-so-tasteful 9ft pyramid) for the very-much-still-alive Nicolas Cage, in New Orleans' St Louis No. 1 cemetery, when we visited in 2017.  And the Animals Cemetery in Jersey, where we went summer 2018, has any number of moving epithets.

  

22. Being Thrifty

There's a vast difference between being thrifty and being mean yet the dividing line is as fine as the one between genius and imbecility. Sometimes it's hard to say what type a person is. In the eyes of some he's a financial wizard who knows how to look after his money, whereas to others he is as tight as a fishes arse, which is well renowned for being water tight.

Same as a bloke who is well endowed when it comes to I.Q. If he's a mite eccentric in his outlook he's considered unconventional to some, but to others he's due for a basket-weaving course. It's hard to be sure, depends how things turn out.

One of the lads who was a member of the Pembroke Boxing and Athletic club, as I was during the thirties, came under the genius or nutter category. We all thought he was barmy. Full stop.

After all, why belong to a boxing club and never get a pair of gloves on and have a bash in the ring ? Why go out on a training run to get fit then half-way round catch a bus back to the club ? Must have been George Raft. Incidents as the night when he turned all the tables and chairs upside-down because he was fed up with seeing the same old set-up and drank his cuppa while balancing on his head to prove that the law of gravity was a fake as the tea went upwards to his stomach, all confirmed our opinion that he was as bent as a four pound note.

But as I said, it all depends how things turn out. In his case we were wrong as after the war he became one of boxing's best known managers of pro. fighters. All the loot he earned from it stemmed from his association with idiots like us who only got cups and medals for our bent hooters and corrugated ears. No names mentioned but I'll tell anyone who cares to ask.

Scrooge was a novice compared with a chap I worked with just after the war. He was a Czech who managed to escape to England before the Nazi invasion and after demob chose to live here with his wife, an English girl he married during the war. His first name was Karl.

Don't get me wrong when I say that Ebenezer S. would have benefited fron a few lessons from him. Whereas E.S. was rich and his frugality was self imposed, Karl had nowt but a few sticks of furniture, a pair of overalls, his demob suit and a bit in the bank. Well more or less.

And an ambition to own a restaurant. Whereby sprang his Spartan way of life in an effort to save money.

I must say that saving anything out of the wages our guv'nor paid was bloody nigh an impossibility.

If Eamonn Andrews* had been doing "This is Your Life" in 1946 and picked on our boss, he'd have read him the Xmas Carol with the exception of Scrooge's change of heart which our guv never got round to having. He retired to a tax haven abroad before they'd been invented.

Anyway Karl made the effort with a determination that was amazing in it's adherance to living on a minimum of outlay.

He'd bring to work one fag, one match and the side of a matchbox. This he'd smoke after dinner which consisted of a cheese butty and a long thin bottle of a pale brown liquid which we assumed to be home-made wine. It was his method of drinking it which led us to this conclusion as he'd take a mouthful, swill it round his teeth, gargle in his throat, then swallow. Only when he left it on the bench one day to go and have a Jimmy and one of the lads took a quick swig, did we find out what it was.

Cold tea, without sugar or milk.

I never saw him eat or drink anything else the whole time he worked there. He never bought a raffle ticket, had a beer with the lads, backed a horse, played a game of brag on paydays or paid for a haircut. His missus cut it. So we, having only the ambition to exist as best we could classed him as a mean sod who wouldn't give you a cold if he had the flu.

And tried innumerable ways to make him part with some cash but all to no avail until one day we found his Achilles heel.  A nosh up of chicken.

He let on that he loved chicken cooked any way. Roast, boiled, fried, grilled, devilled, supreme, curried, diable, with fruit sauce, pimento, apricot stuffed, in casserole, you name it and he positively drooled. But finances being as they were he couldn't afford it.

It so happened that I, at that period of time, kept chickens in my garden, and here was an ideal chance to score over big spender. I told him that I had a bird which was a poor layer and I'd sell it to him for four bob. Dirt cheap.

This was the truth slightly bent to suit the occasion as it was indeed a poor layer having died two days before from internal egg laying and I had buried it in the garden. Which made it dirt cheap. Well for four bob it was.

Karl jumped at the offer and I dug it up that night, cleaned it up and gave it to him next day. Luckily we'd been having a dry spell so it wasn't too bad. Just a mite dusty.

The lads killed themselves laughing when they heard how Karl's taste buds had overcome his avarice and even more so when those same taste buds made him refuse to pay me four bob as he said it had a peculiar taste and it was only worth two shillings. I was a bit relieved that he hadn't got food poisoning so settled for that.

I never saw or heard of him after he left but I'll bet he got his restaurant and I only hope that I never stray in there for a meal. Knowing what blokes are I'd bet my shirt that somebody told him what I did and God alone knows what I'd get served up if I ordered chicken supreme.


Notes:
This entry was written/published in late 1978.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamonn_Andrews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Your_Life_(UK_TV_series)

21. The Natural Urge To Lie

When our parents have got over being dewy-eyed over their new chick and stopped making cooing noises to us, they embark on a crash course of turning little bundle of joy into a responsible member of society, by ramming a long series of "don'ts" down it's throat. Usually high in the top 20 of these is telling lies. I'd like to take a bet that every one of us has had "You lie to me and I'll tan your bum" thrown at him after Mummy and Daddy suddenly face up to the fact that little bundle is no different from any other little horror and can look them straight in the eye while lying like the clappers.

 

What is not realised is that lying is a natural instinct and as such should be cultivated and taught properly like any other subject. An 'O' level  in lying ought to be a must as a qualification for any job worth having and certainly no candidate for local or parliamentary election should be accepted without a first class degree in fabrication.

The largest participant sport in the country is the noble art of angling and non-followers just can't make out why. The answer is obvious - it gives the best opportunity for the human race to give free reign to one of it's basic instincts in all it's various degrees - the natural urge to lie.

I am not a good fisherman for one good reason and that is I am not a good liar. It's got nothing to do with catching fish, just that I can't stretch the truth in the subtle way of the top class angler. Believe me, I've tried it, but after seeing the look of pitying disbelief in the eyes of my audience, I gave up trying and now only tell the truth. I used to think I had a touch of death when it came to handling a rod, sat for hours drowning worms, tempting fish with bits of bread, cheese, part-boiled spuds and sausages and never had so much as a knock. This is one of angling's tense moments, when the alert angler drops his hand to his rod like a cowboy going for his gun, because his float has moved and his is ready for the strike. The only time my float moved was when the maggot got hiccups through swallowing too much water, and as for getting a bite, this is when a fish takes a nibble at the bait in a moment of carelessness and by the time you've heaved up the line and got it caught in a hopeless tangle up a tree, it is at the other end of the lake telling all his mates, well the only bites I ever got were from the gnats which put so much poison in me that if I had got a snake bite, the snake would have died first, and I had got resigned to the fact I just hadn't got what it takes to be an angler. Making the tea - yes, humping all the gear for the family - fine, driving miles to a lake teeming with tench, carp, roach, bream all begging to be caught - expert, but as for catching any of them - flippin useless. Until one day when I'd been wondering, as per usual, how the hell can the line tie itself into a cats cradle without being touched by human hands, it suddenly dawned on me that I had never actually seen anyone catch a fish.

Been told about twenty pound pike, three pound roach, monster fish that fought better than my old tom-cat on passion outings, but never seen 'em. All the blokes round the lake had been as motionless as me, hour after hour, except for the odd move when they made a cup of tea or nipped in to the bushes to have a quick pee. I saw the light, nobody catches any, they made it all up, prefabricated the whole bloody issue. That's what they did while they sat there all that time, perfected their tales they would tell to innocent and honest people like me.

In other words, followed natures basic instinct, which causes Mum and Dad's little cherub to swear blind he hasn't been at the jam when it's smeared all round his cake-hole.

The natural urge to lie. From that moment I knew I'd never be a good fisherman and it had nothing to do with lack of expertise or want of trying, just that I am one of natures misfits. A basically honest person who can't tell a good convincing whopper. So I made up my mind there and then, that I'd be what nature made me and tell only the truth.

 

 

Strangely enough from that time I started to catch fish, and knowing how ill equipped I was for enlarging upon my petty successes, I have stuck firmly to my resolution - to tell the truth. It's paid well too, as my catches have got bigger and bigger and I have been spared the indignity of going red while telling people of the wonderful fish I have caught. It's a great pity that I am so handicapped in being unable to tell a good lie. This will stop me being a top class fisherman I'm afraid. Just imagine what a really good angler could have made from the carp I got last week when at the lake. I was quite alone, as it was late, and had made my last cast for the day, when the line shot out like an express train and it was only by anchoring my body against a tree that I was able to stop myself being dragged in to the water and it took me two solid hours of playing that fish before I got it tired and near enough to get the landing net under it. Unfortunately, the handle of my net was only made of mild steel and broke under the strain of lifting it clear of the water and the fish got away, so in all honesty I can't claim it as a catch. A good fisherman would have made a fine yarn from that and I'm tempted now and again to have another try at it, but I know my limitations, so I think I'll be content with being truthful and leave the lies to folks who are able to do it with the ease that nature has so luckily endowed upon them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20. On The Seventh Day

aka Religious Instruction

I don't remember much of the religious instruction that was forced upon me as a child, mainly because my father made me wear an Eton collar when attending Sunday school.

This was a large white collar so wide that the top nearly cut your ears off when you turned your head, and the bottom made dents in your shoulder blades, and was worn outside the coat lapels giving you the appearance of a walking wedding cake.
Enduring the mickey taking of my mates, without being able to take a swipe at them for fear of decapitating myself, fully occupied my mind, and I didn't absorb much of the ways of the Lord.

However I seem to remember that He made the earth and it's inhabitants in six days, and put His feet up on the seventh.

Now, whatever the boffins tell us about evolution and hereditary traits, they can't successfully explain why all God’s creatures have an irresistible urge to do something that is quite out of keeping with instinctive reason, and what's more, do it no matter what the consequence.

Why do lemmings suddenly march off and drown themselves in their thousands*, bats hang upside down to sleep when it's just as easy to sleep the right way up, eels travel all the way the the Sargasso sea and salmon battle their way up rapids to spawn, when both could quite comfortably have a bit of the other right where they were?

I think the answer is in the obvious explanation and that is that God was tired after all that hard graft and felt He was entitled to have a bit of fun. After all, it would be dead boring to watch all creatures great and small doing exactly what the were supposed to do for ever and ever, amen.

So, He put in the make up of every being, something stupid, something that would be so contrary to reason, that He would always be sure of having a giggle, when Songs of Praise on the Telly got on his nerves. Even He would get browned off being lauded all the time. Only human, ain't it ?

The naked ape, that's us, has two natural functions. One, to see how prolific he is when it comes to siring offspring, and two, to see how many nasty ways he can invent to destroy himself.

So God instilled an urge in him, to record all his noble efforts, so that posterity could read all about his struggles, the gag being, there won't be nobody to read it when he eventually succeeds in fulfilling his destiny.

Thus at some time or other we try our hand at keeping a diary. I had the urge to do it at the age of fourteen** and recorded the daily scene for a whole year. I came across it, amongst other relics of bygone days, when having a clear out of things you can't take with you. On reading through it, I thought that God must have been tired out on that seventh day, as this little joke on homo sapiens misfired a bit, because while keeping a diary was useless when it came to posterity, I got immense pleasure reading about times I had forgotten.

I was back in the days when school girls were all gymslips and pigtails and as sexy as suet pudding, when school uniforms were what your elder brother had grown out of plus new patches on the seat of the pants and elbows of the coat, when school meals were usually a paste sandwich clutched in the hand while you played football in the playground, when bits of blotting paper soaked in ink and darts made from broken pen-nibs flew thick and fast across the class room, and when the throwers of such missiles got two on each hand from Sir if caught.

Psychology hadn't been invented then, and Sir maintained a fair discipline at a very low cost. The price of a new cane, when the old one broke, or a swift thump on the unwary Herbert who didn't duck fast enough.

We weren't any the worse for it, as it was accepted that if you were mug enough to get caught then you got punished, no hard feelings on either side. Any homicidal feelings towards that rotten sod Sir, died by the time your fingers stopped tingling, anyway you were too busy holding your hands between your knees or sitting on them, to be able to do anything about it in the interim.

 

I read references to teachers I hadn't thought of since leaving school.

Old Gobbo, so named because he sprayed you with spit if he spoke to you any nearer than five feet away.

The Twickman, who's r's sounded like w's, who invariably prefaced his maths lesson with "I'm going to show you a mathematical twick".

Bogey, who continually picked his nose during the science talks, and what was worse, flicked it at you if he thought you were not paying attention.

Mr. King (History) was affectionately known as Dot and Carry one, because he walked that way. A smashed kneecap at Mons (World War 1) made his right leg stiff as a poker and he swung it in a semi-circle to get it along, but this affliction in no way impaired his ability to give you a swift boot up the arse if he caught you mocking him.

Mr. Ede was an excitable little Welshman whose accent was so broad, that my class, who struggled to learn French under him, are probably the only people who speak it with a Welsh accent.

Beaky Harrison, whose enormous schnozzola had a permanent drip when it was cold and which joined up to the end of the shag fags he smoked during his spell on duty at playtime.

Wat Tyler, a temporary teacher, took over when Dot and Carry was on the sick list, and told us that nothing of importance happened before the Great War and to our great delight, spent his history sessions telling us yarns of his own dubious adventures during that period. The Heads swiftly gave him the push when he found out about, but I think that Mr Tyler has something there as Wat Tyler 1914-1918 remains clear in my memory, whereas the life of Charles II which we weres supposed to have learned, is still a complete blank in spite of all Dot and Carry's efforts to cram it into us when he returned. 

Then there was Kreamy Lynch who was probably the original Brylcreem boy as he had thick black hair which he plastered so lavishly with brilliantine that it ran down his face and neck so much that he looked as if he had his head in a bird cage.

And our Art master, who, besides being very Bohemian in outlook and appearance, dwelt under the sobriquet of Camel dial, not because his face resembled a camels', but because we all thought it looked like the other end. 

These were but a few of the hard worked, underpaid band of dedicated tutors, who did their utmost to transform the sow's ear mob of urchins of the late twenties and early thirties into the silken purse citizens of the late thirties and early forties.  As I said, Sir was the guv'nor in these days, maybe because he had everything in his favour, like a dirty great cane and also the support of our fathers, who wore full of apt phrases, such as :-

"Spare the rod and spoil the child" and

"Children should be seen and not heard"

I don't know whether it was the true concept of correct moulding of character, but I don't think it was all that wrong, as later events proved.

Anyway, my diary, which I hope gave God the degree of relaxation He intended, certainly helped me in one respect, although I hadn't realised it until I remembered those Sirs of yesterday.

Our Headmaster was known as Rip Roaring Reg because of his habit of tearing off defaulters, in the loudest strip they’d ever heard in their young lives After reducing the quaking miscreant to a quivering jelly of nerves with the sheer volume of his voice, he would suddenly request, in a very mild tone, that the cane and book be brought to him please then after briskly slashing six of the best down, three on each hand, thanked the offender attending and dismissed him with a fog-horn roar, of "next".

He also taught us poetry. He was a Robbie Burns addict, and must have suffered agonies trying to teach and make us appreciate the indecipherable Burns lingo. I never did, but one tiny bit of his poetry has always stuck in my mind. 

"Oh wad the Lord some giftie gie us
tae see oorsels as ithers see us" ***

Well, I don't think many people are that gifted, certainly not me, but remembering those Sirs of way back I thought that perhaps I'd been granted a wee bitty of a giftie, as I seem to see ithers as a funny lot, or p'raps it's just my warped outlook.

Anyway, you need a bit of a laugh at times, as I think God did, on that seventh day.

Notes:

* An urban myth that became widespread after this behaviour was shown in the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness in 1958. The animals in the film were not wild animals jumping off the cliff voluntarily, they were bought by the producers and pushed over the edge of the cliff. Nice work, Uncle Walt.


** That was 1930/31


** The final verse of "To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church", 1786, and is actually:

"O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"

We take the opportunity to wish 

A Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year to:

• The television mogul who manages to kill off and bury deep in the abyss of idiots from whence they came Coronation Street, Crossroads, Sale of the Century, The Incredible Hulk, Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Bionic Man, Woman and Dog

• Joe (I Love England) Bugner, but only if he promises not come back from America

• Liz Taylor and the final instalment of her boring marriage saga

• Elton John and his definite final retirement

• The honest trader who quotes straight-forward prices for his good without giving a lot of bull about how much you save by not buying them at the ludicrous figure he says they are worth

• The dustmen if they don't leave us up to our armpits in muck and flies more than once a year

• Frank Sinatra and his definite final retirement

• All punk rockers for their outstanding influence on young people in the art of decent, courteous behaviour

• The Mirror and The Sun, if they don't progress from the boob pictures to full frontal exposure, which they're trying hard to do

• The Canadian P.O. if they'll strike at any other time than the Xmas Period as they usually do

• Mohammed Ali and his definite final retirement

• Mr 5% Jim, if he'll let us have more as he does everyone else

• The person who'll tell Eamon Andrews to get stuffed when he wants to tell the world about their life

• ERNIE, if it ever coughs up any of my premium bond numbers, which I've had since 1958

• All traffic wardens. May their work to rule last forever

• Professor Magnus Pyke, who can be interesting when he's not acting like a caffeinated windmill

• Any contestant in Mastermind who can't answer a question that I can

• Any horse in a show-jumping competition who refuses at the high wall and slings its rider through it

• Readers Digest, if they'll stop bombarding me with adverts of their damn books just because I bought one from them years ago

             

Christmas 1983

PEACE AND GOODWILL TO ONE AND ALL

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

19. The Six Fillings

If Mother Nature hadn't given us a stomach, she wouldn't have punished us for making pigs of ourselves, by keep on filling it with nosh. But give us a stomach she did, and then filled our mouth up with teeth, to make us suffer.  Not only that, but gave us an inbuilt fear of getting anywhere within ten miles of a dentist. Mother Nature is no doubt wonderful, but if she ever assumed human form, I bet she'd have razor blades sewn to her knickers , if you get what I mean. No pleasure without pain.

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.

18. The Invention

At some time or other in our lives, every one of us must have had the thought that if we try hard enough we could invent something that nobody else had yet thought of, but was so simple and obvious that how mankind had existed without it all this time, was one of the mysteries that only God could answer. Every now and again, some idiot presents the world with an invention that nets him a quick fortune, and is so simple that you could kick yourself for not having got in first, because, well you could have thought of that, couldn't you?

The answer lays in the old saying "you can't see the wood for the trees" or in other words, the best hiding place is right under your nose. After all, how many generations of blokes, with frozen fingers, had to leave their flies undone after having a jimmy-riddle, because their hands were too cold to do them up, before some bod nipped in to invent a zip-fastener*. Dead simple, wasn't it? Anybody could have thought of it, right under your noses, well give or take a couple of feet.

And how would women's liberation have got underway, if someone hadn't invented the bra for them to wave in the air? So there again was a simple solution which some clever so and so spotted, and is now rolling in the lap of luxury.

Perhaps inspiration would come more easily if we though of inventing something that would benefit our fellow creatures, rather than make our bank manager get out the port and king size cigars when he saw us instead of saying "About your overdraft, Mr Snooks".

As, for instance, the invention I came across when driving on holiday one year. We pulled in to a typical roadside café, with usual signs all over it. Eat at Pete's. Good pull up for drivers. Coaches welcome. Ladies and gents toilets at back etc etc etc. It was a very hot day, and after driving for some time through towns with one way circuits that nearly had me round the twist with frustration, as no matter which way I went, I came back to the town centre, and when I did get out it was on the way back to the town I'd just left; my wife and I were dying for a lovely quiet refreshing cuppa away from the madding crowd. The bloke who invented Hampton Court Maze was a novice compared to raving maniacs who plan the average one way system. Anyway, Eat at Pete's hove into view along a long lonely country road, which, according to the map, didn't exist, but was the only exit we could find from the jungle of road signs and prowling traffic wardens, waiting to pounce with their little plastic covered tickets at the ready.

The Taj Mahal couldn't have looked more beautiful than this corrugated jewel, nestling on it's carpet of loose dirt and empty Coca-Cola cans. We parked and made for the door where lay the soul reviving peace of a quiet sit down with a cuppa and maybe the added luxury of a cheese butty, as it was, after all, holiday time.

The thought of it hastened our steps towards the door which I opened in anticipation of joys to come, and was met by a blast of sound which bloody nigh knocked us back to the car. This bejewelled retreat, from the stresses of the one way circuit, was as a beautiful woman who nurtured a viper in her bosom. In this case, a damn great juke box standing in the corner, blaring out top of the pops, at the top of its strident metallic lungs. Well, the need of refreshment overcame all thoughts of retreat, and as I went to the counter to order, I came across this heaven sent invention which should have netted its inventor untold material gain and a place among the immortals to boot. Among the top twenty records available at a tanner a go, there it lay, the inspiration that sets a man above the beasts, a silent record, once without a groove, two whole minutes of silence bought for a miserable sprasi. Was there ever a better bargain offered to the road-weary traveller? I spent as many sixpences as I could manage to get in without smashing the teacups in the race to get to the monster before the local youths, who no doubt, felt that this was an intrusion into private lives, and could possibly have dangerous side effects in later years.

Young people cannot operate without the accompaniment of noise and too much silence unsettles them, possibly to the extent of eventual impotency, who knows?  Maybe the unknown genius who had invented this gift to homo sapiens had deeper motives than golden silence and was really concerned about world population explosion. Only posterity will tell, and should it prove true, the silent record will be hailed as the most infallible contraceptive since the advent of the pill.

So put your minds at work and try to think of something that will enrich all people instead of only yourself, and you will find inspiration abounding.

This is what I have done, and am now working on a cure for lumbago, slipped disc, and all the numerous back ailments that afflict us today. As it will be in common use before this article is printed, I'll tell you all what it is that I have done.

It's a pair of scissors, three feet long, available in two grades, standard with wooden handles to be operated with two hands, or deluxe which expand from six inches to three feet, to be used with one hand from the hip, to enable folk with dodgy backs to cut their toenails without bending.

So carry on trying and I'll be happy to hear of your efforts and will write about them in a future article, if you would care to let me know about them.


Notes:

*Says wikipedia: the zipper beat the button in 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly", after French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray".

Pleasingly (though I'll hazard, not from Grandads perspective) I've typed up this piece with that modern-ish jukebox, the CD player, on windows wide open and the Wharfedale's banging out a little bit of Iron Maiden, little knowing the narrative I was starting on a half hour or so ago. Next door will be wishing I had me the silent record.

Actually, silent records have a bit of history - see the attached.
http://musicweird.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-sounds-of-silence-brief-history-of.html