The dentist today. Oh good!

I 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 Liverpool’s John Bagot Hospital.

It had been built to treat servicemen wounded in the Crimean Wars.

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.

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.

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?’

These are my thoughts as today in my much loved Costa 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.

We hug and exchange air-kisses mixed with affectionate pleasantries.

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.

One gets the impression that with Filippa one can dispense with anaesthetics; such is her kindness and her patient empathy.

Much the same kind be said for her delightful Spanish 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.