More Purgatory at the Dentist.

I vaguely recall a white van coming around and parking in the top end of the school playground. No doubt we had dental inspections but we also had one come round to do mass xrays and Tuberculosis testing? This was after all the fifties and I believe we even still had sanatoriums in those days.

Somehow these visits filled us all with trepidations because there was a fear of such things in those days and later on even more for Polio and the thought of living in one of those giant iron lungs.

Seems I was forever getting Polio injections and whenever we said we had had them we were told that the previous ones weren't valid for some reason? Seems they weren't very good at writing things down in those days. Or did they get paid for how many they did?

This continued with regularity in the Army along with being retested for the Military Swimming Test! "But I've done it!" we protested. "It wasn't recorded so you'll have to do it again"!

The most humiliating experience I had with dentists came about in Bulford Camp Centre on thge edge of Salisbury Plain in the late sixties. I was serving with the Army Air Corps at the time up at Netheravon Airfield.

I had to have a filling but before I was allowed to see the Dentist I had to get past the Hygienist.

Now the Hygienist was a tall extremely elegant looking and full of himself Cpl who was the worlds most eminent expert on dental hygiene.

The cleaning of teeth was his particular forte and he demonstrated with vigour with a toothbrush and a large pair of false teeth.

Apparently my dental hygiene was dismally pathetic and he gleefully demonstrated on the passive model as if he was lecturing a hall full of dental miscreants.

I do believe that I had to attend his remedial classes and cleaning and polishing for some weeks before I was eventually rewarded with seeing the Dentist which was, as you may now well imagine for me, unrelenting purgatory ...

Now I don't want you to think my trips to the Dentist was always hell. Just most of the time ... But there was a time when some pleasure did come from such events.

When I was with the REME Tels Branch at RSRE Great Malvern in the early 80's we never had a barracks and used the Dentist of the SAS in Hereford.

Now the dentist there was female too and she would nestle my head between her very ample bosom as she worked on my teeth.

That was the nearest I got to relaxed dentistry.

A kinda pain and ecstasy ...