Fangs For The Memories

CHAPTER ONE



It was never my intention to be a dental technician. Before I found myself press-ganged into seeking a job I didn’t even know such a thing existed. The thought had never occurred to me that the bleached white objects that Aunty Dolly immersed each night in a glass of diluted Domestos at the side of her bed would have to have been made by somebody. It wasn’t the sort of thing a fifteen year old acne carriage in Early Sixties Merseyside dwelt upon very much. Mini skirts, the Space Race, Dr Who and the Rolling Stones, yes - false teeth, I don’t think so. I lived on the Wirral, a short ferry ride from the Cavern Club. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Small Faces and the Kinks took up the percentage of my time that didn’t involve falling down wells and dreaming up more and more destructive ways of using the Standard bangers and rockets I had squirreled away in little hidey-holes for use in the school holidays.

By the time it came to seeking gainful employment, Merseyside had become the Welsh Borders, fireworks had become motorcycles and jelly and ice cream, testosterone, which, for those whose attention may already be wandering, is not a triangular Alpine confection of chocolate, honey and nougat.

It was the summer of ’69. Neil and Buzz had just walked on the Moon, the Beatles were beginning to fall apart at the seams and the Great Hippie Peace and Love Ideal would shortly come crashing down around the ears of us all at Altamont.

Ah, yes, the Summer of ’69. That’s 1969 and not reference to an indeterminate summer during which I discovered the existence of certain activities from which I had been hitherto shielded by well-meaning ‘grown-ups’. I was about to launch myself on the great Voyage of Life, drink loads of beer, have lots of girlfriends and -- get that job.

My parents insisted that I should have a job to go to before school restarted in September otherwise I would have to go back and become a sixth former. It may not have been as bad as I imagined, but at the time it scared the hell out of me.

There were no JobCentres, Plus or otherwise. I shambled along to the Labour Exchange, exhibiting something short of the total conviction expected of me. I’d already been for one interview; the post of Office Junior in the local Surveyor’s Department…not at all what I had in mind for myself. To be honest, I had nothing in mind for myself but if I had so done it would be anything but Office Junior in any department anywhere. I made sure I didn’t get that one.

When I returned home with the news that I was to start work as an apprentice dental mechanic it was as though I had announced my imminent succession to the Throne.
“Ooooh, that’s a good job”, “Those get good money, you know” and, “Well, there you are. After all your fuss you’ve certainly landed on your feet”.

?????????

I imagine they were thinking the end result of all this would be my qualification as a dentist because what they envisaged for me was not the same as the thing in which I ended up embroiled for the next nineteen years. Whilst not wishing to doubt the value and esteem of the trade of Dental Technology today, back then it was something of a poor relation to just about anything else that existed with the possible exception of toilet cleaning.

Wages were pitiful, conditions Dickensian and prospects non-existent. The Laboratory (hereinafter referred to as The Lab) was usually nothing more than a perfunctorily converted cellar, attic, shed, flowerpot or other unimportant - and preferably unseen - cubby hole or broom cupboard. The mechanic himself was weedy, sickly, pasty-faced, blinking, myopic and a general, all-round embarrassment. The patient rarely got to know of his existence save that, when something went wrong it was the fault of ‘the bloody mechanic’. Otherwise the patient, newly-fitted and grinning would, in the lounge bar of the Spleen and Sneezewort, laud the “smashing pair of teeth my dentist made me”, all the while beaming, piano-like about the room.

Most of the customers (The Gentlemen) were of the old school, believing that both patient and mechanic should be kept firmly in their place. Only the Boss, and on rare occasions, the Senior Partner, ever got to meet them face to face. Even when we ragamuffins were allowed to go on The Round, work was passed to us via the nurse so the Master wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of consorting with minions.



So I turned up, scrubbed and sparkling, for my first day, expecting to be taken under the wing of an experienced mechanic, shown the ropes and gradually honed into the finished product - a fully fledged Dental Mechanic. During my interview I had been given to understand that I would, in that time, learn all there was to learn about my ‘chosen’ vocation. In the event it transpired that I did indeed acquire many skills, very few of which had even the most tenuous connection with dental mechanics.

Had it been my wish to forge for myself a career in painting and decorating, window cleaning, construction, gardening (landscape or cultivation), roofing, electrical engineering, plastering, catering, freight forwarding, secretarial duties, domestic services and so on and so forth, I would have had no cause for complaint. When I queried this ostensible disinclination to advance my education in those matters relating to the terms of my indentures, I was told it was due to lack of time, lack of get-up-and-go on my part, lack of resources and the fact that “you haven’t been here long enough”.

My fellow apprentices and I were actively discouraged from attending college where we might have acquired our City and Guilds on account of it being “a waste of time” and “you don’t need to know about all that rubbish to be a dental mechanic”

Of course, it was our interests which were held at heart and nothing at all to do with the fact that, not only would it cost them, but there would be the added indignity of having to give us a day off for the insult.

So – a typical week in the life of an apprentice dental mechanic, circa 1969:-

Monday
09:00 - Make tea
09:10 - Feed cat
09:15 - Tidy rubbish in front garden (lab was extension to Boss’s house); chip papers,
beer bottles and new-fangled cans, vomit residual from weekend (pub down
road)
09:30 - Turn that thing over to Radio 2
09:31 - Clean oven
10:30 - Dig patch in back garden ready for planting spuds
12:45 - Lunch (home)
13:45 - Make tea
13:55 - Tidy kitchen
14:30 - Sort rubbish and put in trailer for Boss to take to tip
15:30 - Make coffee
15:40 - Ask if allowed to mark up impressions for casting. Told not to be stupid
15:41 - Sent to chemist to buy Durex for Junior Partner
16:00 - Do up post
16:15 - Go to Post Office
16:30 - Can’t we find summat for that lad to do?
16:32 - Wash down walls in Chrome Department
17:00 - Home, but call at DIY shop and pick up emulsion. Be sure to ask for trade
discount

Tuesday
09:00 - Make tea
09:01 - Turn that bloody thing over to Radio 2
09:10 - Begin emulsioning walls of Chrome Department
09:11 - But feed cat first
09:15 - Carry on emulsioning (starring Sid James, Hattie Jaques, Charles Hawtrey etc)
12:45 - Lunch (chip shop)
13:45 - Make tea
13:55 - Carry on emulsioning
15:13 - Haven’t you finished that %^%$£^& painting yet? Bloody kids, I don’t know,
in my day etc etc….
15:30 - Make coffee
15:40 - Ask if allowed to cast impressions. Told not to be stupid
15:41 - Finish emulsioning
16:00 - Tidy up. Do up post. Post Office
16:30 - Clean splashes of emulsion off Boss’s hat
17:00 - Home, but call at garden centre to pick up seed potatoes (put on account)

Wednesday
09:00 - Make tea
09:01 - Turn that %^%$£^& thing over to Radio 2
09:10 - Clean windows
09:35 - Feed cat (late)
09:40 - Apply ointment to scratched hand
09:45 - Sort out trailer (items brought back from tip by Boss; broom handle, electric
flex, old paint brushes, black and white bathroom tiles, art deco lamp shade) and clean
10:30 - Plant seed potatoes
12:00 - Phone order to Chinese takeaway
12:05 - Rescue cat from pear tree
12:30 - Go to Chinese to pick up order
13:05 - Lunch (late - Chinese not ready)
13:50 - Bollocking for being late back - Chinese excuse invalid
13:53 - Make tea
14:05 - Wash cars
15:00 - Clean toilets
15:30 - Make coffee
15:40 - Wash hands
15:41 - Ask if allowed to repair midline fracture. Told not to be stupid
15:42 - Fetch plaster from shed. Suggest access to shed awkward due to proximity of wall. Told to stop whinging
15:45 - Might as well start doing up post
16:05 - Post Office
16:30 - Weed front garden
17:10 - Home, but call at DIY shop to pick up tile cutter and cement (trade discount)

Thursday
09:00 - Make tea
09:01 - Turn that %^%$£^& thing OFF!
09:02 - Lecture about lack of manners, consideration, ideas of fun etc of emergent generation
09:15 - Feed cat
09:20 - Fix tiles round sink in main lab (paint dog poo in pretty colours)
11:00 - Boss returns from wherever. Remove tiles and fix alternately black and white
12:45 - Lunch (pub!)
13:46 - Make tea
13:55 - Boss suggests shed too near wall
13:57 - Begin dismantling shed for removal to far end of garden
15:30 - Make coffee
15:40 - Don’t bother asking is allowed to do anything connected with dental mechanics. Asked if I
shouldn’t be giving serious thought to commitment to job. Ask if allowed to grind flash off dentures.
Told not to be stupid
15:45 - Carry on moving shed (no post today)
17:15 - Home, but call at hardware shop for padlock for shed to replace one lost during relocation
(cost to be deducted from wages)

Friday
09:00 - Make tea
09:01 - Boss smashes radio with deflasking mallet and chucks in trailer
09:02 - Asked if I might like to consider paying visit to barber tomorrow. Don’t want any beatnik types
working here, thank you. What do you think this is, that Woodstick or something (Man)?
09:10 - Connect shed electrics
09:45 - Switch on compressor in shed
09:46 - Mend fuses
10:15 - Attacked by ravenous cat. Feed it
10:20 - Boss worried about news report last evening warning of imminent nuclear holocaust
10:22 - DIY shop to buy spade, trade discount etc….
10:38 - Begin digging fallout shelter
10:45 - Boss makes phone call to Lodge member - oops! - business associate
10:50 - Stop digging
10:55 - Return spade to DIY shop
11:15 - Fit new screen to Boss’s Raleigh Wisp (blew over in gales)
12:00 - Roof leaking. Go up to discover source
12:05 - Remove last Autumn’s leaves from roof. Apply mastic
12:45 - Lunch (pub!!)
13:59 - Told off for being late back. Don’t care. Make tea
14:07 - Make more tea. Hot water this time
14:13 - Phone travel agent to order brochures for Boss’s holiday (Majorca)
14:28 - Rake gravel on path
15:30 - Make tea
15:35 - Pour tea down sink
15:36 - Make coffee
15:40 - Told to get repair model
15:45 - Regain consciousness. Asked if still required to get repair model. Told not to be stupid
16:00 - Post etc….
16:55 - Asked why so long at Post Office, Don’t have answer. Don’t care
16:59 - Chip shop
18:00 - Pub… hic……

Saturday
01:30 - HIC!!!!!!!


******** ******** ******** ********



Some of the next nineteen years I allegedly spent as a dental mechanic, the rest as a technician. Quite when the changeover occurred I neither know nor care. All I do know is that it never felt any different. In truth, I was never really either. What I was was a bloke who used to go to a dental laboratory and pratt about with various stages in the construction and maintenance of false teeth. That is not the same thing.

Eventually I was allowed to graduate from odd-jobbing to doing something in furtherance of the lining of my employer’s coffers. It was, of course, the manky repair. Barely sixteen, fresh-faced still, hauled up through garden parties and Sunday school and shielded from the horrors of the real world to the extent where I wasn’t allowed to listen to the News on the wireless until I was fourteen, I was hardly prepared for this greatest of ignominies.

“Go in the Office,” I was told, “and see to that repair.”

In I went, smiling, unsuspecting; life was good. I had a job, money coming in - a whole four guineas a week (Bloody ridiculous. How are we supposed to afford to pay the buggers that much? Etc….). Things couldn’t have been better.

The patient, a grimy septuagenarian, ponging of Woodbines and mild ale, reached, without a word, into his mouth to produce an object the likes of which I had never beheld. Slurps and suction noises accompanied the removal of the obscenity, the whole operation putting me in mind of the birth of a pony. A pair of scissors would have been useful to separate denture from mouth by dint of severing the string-like strands of phlegm and mucus that held the constituents together.

If there wasn’t a loud pop upon separation, then there should have been. Green as I was, I had already held out my hand, into which the old man slapped the prosthesis.

“Can you fix it?” he asked.

Fix it? I’d have to neutralise it first. Boiled in a pan of water, with a few onions and a little salt, it might form the basis of a nutritious soup to warm the cockles on a winter’s eve.

It wasn’t just reeking old vagrants that were the source of such ignominy; respectable businessmen, poodle-walking ladies of the Manor, members of the clergy - all came and all were served. I could never fathom why a chap who wouldn’t be seen dead without a tie, or his shoes shined, could allow his gob to harbour the foulest, smelliest lump of unholy gunge in Christendom. Aside from the unpleasantness for those close to him or her it must taste vile; half an inch of grease from an abandoned garage floor scraped up and held in the mouth all day. Yeukk!

Certainly in the modern day lab things are very different. Although I hung up my pen-point and toothpick many years ago I still retain contacts from my old life. I speak as a technician through familiarity and a certain amount of fondness and sympathy for those still ensnared by the mighty daughter of Shelob that calls itself Dental Technology when I say before we ever get to touch the thing it’s been sprayed, disinfected, sterilised, sandblasted, dynamited, so that, by the time it arrives on the bench, every little HIV or Hepatitis B has been blasted to Kingdom Come - theoretically.

Yet there still lingers, like the shell of a jaundiced armadillo, twenty years of tartar, rock-solid and impenetrable. Acrylic so impregnated with stale greyness that it falls apart in the hands having been held there solely by the filth now removed.

But do we shy from it? Do our stomachs churn at the thought? No, for we have become immune, like the addict desperate for more of his drug without which he cannot achieve the same high and can never be truly at ease.

A recently made, clean denture arrives, fractured midline. But what is this? Wherefore the sludge? Wherefore the crusted bile, the aeons worth of built-up saliva, clinging like stone-cladding to a late-Victorian mid-terrace dwelling?

For a split second we are at a loss and cannot proceed - a fish out of water. We are seized by a panic and suffer withdrawal symptoms - Technician’s Cold Turkey.

Gasping for breath, with clammy fingers we tear at the air, desperate for a flash of brown or green until, at last, into our lap is dropped blessed relief in the shape of an egg-bound part lower fracture swimming in slime and stinking to High Heaven of something unutterably abominable.

Not one of these people would dream of picking their nose and presenting you with the contents or scratching their backside before proffering a hand of greeting so why should it be any different where dentures are concerned? One for a team of boffins in some research laboratory somewhere I suppose. Somewhere a little more secure and clandestine than Porton Down.

I remain a champion of the little oval dish and tweezers, hydrochloric acid and being there long enough to have minions beneath you who are ‘for’ such things


All of this happened back in the Ordovician Period, when pennies were the size of ice hockey pucks, you could take three steps in a pair of jeans before the flares moved, and the BBC’s alternative to Pirate Radio was Jimmy Young’s Recipe. The Apprentice Dental Mechanic occupied a place in the social hierarchy somewhere beneath Myra Hindley and the Rolling Stones. There was an attitude amongst employers that suggested because they grudgingly threw a couple of pounds a week at us (Apprentices) in a small brown envelope, it somehow granted them authority over how we conducted our lives both in and out of work. Sadly, we believed it too. Consensus was that we knew nothing, did less and were a nuisance sent to punish some heinous, but forgotten, past transgression. Although the points below were never actually written out or said as such, we were left in no doubt that it was considered that we neither knew nor cared about any of it so it was somehow telepathically conveyed to us by knowing looks and inference. A short, yet accurate, list, then, of how one was made to feel for merely having the audacity to inflict oneself on The Lab every day:-


Tea and coffee are liquids intended to refresh and rejuvenate and not some sort of diabolical endurance test. Use freshly boiled water (in the case of coffee, allowed to cool slightly before infusing), clean cups or mugs (not ‘cleaned’ with a dirty rag or, as practiced by an autumnal character masquerading as a cleaner in a lab of my acquaintance, the same one used to do the toilet rims), and milk bereft of lumps and alien cultures.

Handles are for turning. They are not devices designed to give you more grip and purchase to enable you to slam things even harder

Mops are not blessed with magical powers that automatically cleanse the water in the bucket

A broom that looks as though it’s just been inducted into the US Marine Corps is not a lot of use. Buy a new one (this in the face of my former boss’s - possibly urban legend - assertion that ‘Bloody good brush, that. We’ve had it thirty years and it’s only ever had twelve new heads and ten new handles’)

The shed is a Tardis

Lunchtimes are for fetching fish and chips, or, in later years, a Chinese, for ‘proper staff’

It is not a sackable offence to throw away less than 85% of all plaster and acrylic mixed up

Do not expect to be paid for overtime - the fact that you have to work late must be your fault for not pulling your weight during the day

A dental laboratory does not instantly transmogrify into a pyrotechnics one the instant the Boss goes off to his Round Table meeting. Experiments such as filling Bunsen tubing with various polymers (especially ‘weighted’ material) and blowing them through Bunsen flames or placing the business end of a Bunsen burner into a bowl of soapy water and igniting the bubble thus formed are to be neither encouraged nor recommended

It is perfectly acceptable to replace a light bulb which has failed within twelve months

Plaster spilt on the plaster room floor, although it should not have been spilt in the first place, once it has been, may be swept up and disposed of. It is not necessary to leave it to get wet, go off and become some sort of impromptu and economical rhino flooring substitute for said room

Nowhere in your Indentures does it state that it is a condition of your employment that at some stage during the five years of your Apprenticeship you are obliged to - ahem -‘go out’ with the Boss’s daughter.

Get some normal handlebars on that motorbike. You look like a Hells Angel

Managerial responses when pressed on issues regarding Apprenticeship:-

• Indentures stating that all aspects of the trade should be taught within the five year term; ‘Oh, that’s just put in to justify their fees. Now, go and get those repair models’
• Upon objecting to being instructed to repair the roof, weed the garden, move the shed, change the oil in the Boss’s Merc, collect the plums off the tree oh and it’s okay to go next door to get the ones you can’t reach never mind about the dog it’s alright really and if the bloke asks what you’re doing there you’re nothing to do with us, ok? etc; ‘It says you’ve got to learn everything, doesn’t it?’
• Over mention made of Day Release to college to obtain City & Guilds; ‘ You don’t want to bother with any of that rubbish’


The offences below will result in mandatory instant dismissal:-

• Having a better car than the Boss
• Living in a better house than the Boss
• Going on better holidays than the Boss
• Having holidays
• Putting Radio 1 on in the afternoon
• Sharpening the edge of the Boss’s favourite teaspoon
• Fashioning a huge nose out of acrylic and placing the Boss’s spare spectacles on it overnight
• Fashioning other body parts out of acrylic and leaving them in the Office as a joke, intending to remove them before patients arrive to have their dentures repaired, but forgetting
• Liking the Rolling Stones
• Listening to the Rolling Stones
• Looking like a Rolling Stone
• Having heard of Frank Zappa
• Voting Labour
• Taking the micky out of fishing, golf or caravanning
• Having parents who know about employees’ rights
• Having an IQ greater than 50
• Not being as daft as they’d like you to be


Finally:-

Don’t do as I do. Do as I say


******** ******** ******** ********

THE BUGGERS

We, the staff, were habitually referred to as ‘The Buggers’ as in ‘The trouble with you buggers is you’ve got no staying power’ upon complaining that we’d been working solidly for twelve hours and felt it might be nice to go home for a little while to remind loved ones of our existence, and ‘Well, next job, I suppose I’d better pay the buggers’ - the inference being that ‘not only do they come here cluttering up the place and using our gas and electric but they have the gall to expect to be paid for it’. The frightening thing is, nobody, neither staff nor management, imagined in their wildest dreams that there was the slightest thing the matter with it all.

‘The Buggers’, then; that disparate mess of individuals that constituted the staff of The Lab. Obviously I would never stoop so low as to name names and point fingers so I’m inventing a hypothetical Lab, known as The Lab for the purpose of this dissertation, along with owners, management and Buggers in order to try and put over some kind of notion what life was like back then in the era of the Three Day Week and Showaddywaddy. So, this lab never existed, although I imagine many who worked in the trade in those days will claim I must have been spying on them. Sufficient time has elapsed between my spell at The Lab and the present day for me to be able to state categorically that what follows is pure fiction. I make no inference that these characters are based in any way on former employers and colleagues and should anybody recognise themselves then I suggest they keep it quiet. Therefore

Any similarity between the following characters and persons living or otherwise..... is entirely intentional.


We had:-

The (Mis)Management

OWNER/PROPRIETOR/’THE BOSS’

In about 1796 he inherited the business from his uncle which ironically gave him a perceived place in life several rungs above what he would have had if he had actually forgone the plate-handed one and opted to earn a living by way of the bottom-rung-first route that most poor sods have to take. This social standing way above his station gave him access to privileged company such as Rotary Club, and Golf Clubs that expected him to place his membership above family, friends and life itself, charged £500 a year for the privilege and insisted on him not knowing one end of his niblick from the other. Oh, and to drive a Mercedes or BMW that he couldn’t afford. What didn’t come with it was a speck of interest in the trade, with consequential lack of the slightest aptitude for same that resulted in the Senior Partner (see below) having to return to The Lab at the dead of night and re-set up every single try-in that the Boss has shovelled together that day. A less than ideal life, but better than going out to work.

SENIOR PARTNER

One of Oliver Hardy’s ‘smart guy who's even dumber than the dumb guy’ types, he went straight to The Lab after National Service and stayed there until his retirement. Having ‘worked his way up’ for many years he bought into the business, with an unexpected windfall, for a ludicrously inflated price only later realising how much he’d been taken for a chump and seething about it into his dotage, blaming everyone from Shakespeare to Hitler - and especially The Buggers. He expected staff on infinitesimal pay to have the same attitude and enthusiasm for the business as he did and couldn’t understand the concept of anybody merely going to work in order to pay the bills and have a life. This was a man who, despite being no oil painting himself, except perhaps for something from one of Picasso’s more experimental periods, was given to making personal comments about every single person who crossed his path, usually as an aside just as they were out of earshot. Hauled various Buggers over the coals for wearing Levi 501s that cost five times as much as the tacky brown off-the-peg suit regarded by himself as haute couture. Had a home life that made the Dingles look like The Woodentops.

JUNIOR PARTNER

Straight from school to The Lab. Wannabe Jack-the-Lad. By habit, took up the Sport of the Month with exaggerated enthusiasm buying all the gear (rowing, cricket, snooker down to little leather pouch for chalk). Awful at them all and had to sell the gear at greatly reduced price (pre-eBay) to fund the next craze. Drew the line at Rope Rushing and Space Hopping.

THE BUGGERS

APPRENTICES and ORDINARY STAFF

Apparently, a bunch of long haired, lefty, drug-taking beatniks and drop-outs (despite the fact that they all had, by necessity to be considered one of The Buggers, full time employment) who listened to that beat music on the Light Programme whilst riding Japanese motorbikes up the pavement at old ladies - oh, and did all the work.

THE GIRLS

Separate from The Buggers and drafted in because they could be paid much less and subjected to ‘amusing’ ribald remarks, they ranged from heartbreakingly gorgeous to ‘aesthetically challenged’. One of The Gentlemen phoned the Boss and said ‘please don’t send that monstrosity to my surgery again, frightening my patients and turning the milk’ And the Management complied! The Senior Partner interviewed one young lady and when asked why he hadn’t given her the job replied that the last time he’d seen something like that it was on a wildlife programme and the other end had just bitten a crocodile in half.

PART TIMERS/ AUTUMNAL SKIVERS

A motley collection of 45 year old, six foot six, twenty four stone and clumsy bachelors who lived with their Mums, otherwise unemployable management family members, nose-picking Sally Army soup-kitchen rejects and octogenarian chain smokers with angina and other debilitating conditions forced to empty bins and refill plaster hoppers.


TRAVELLERS

Downtrodden company reps who would drive 400 miles to complete the sale of a box of sticky wax and smile unconvincingly at amateurish impressions of their accents. They were generally instantly forgettable but there was one who sticks in the memory. ‘Ossie’ was from Clitheroe. He visited once a month without fail, took the same order every time and suffered all the ‘Ay up’s, ‘Ee bah gum’s, ‘’Appen thad lak t’put kettle on, Mother’s and ‘A’l go t’t foot of ower steyers, by ‘eck, that a will, see if a’ dornt’s. and being called Jimmy and ‘Ee, a thought tha wust shorter than that from seeing thee ont’ telly’ all done in thinly-disguised Shropshire accents until he finally drew the line at being accused of being a Yorkshireman.

ODD JOBBERS

Ordinarily, were there any ‘small’ jobs to be done in The Lab or its environs, Buggers would be roped in to complete them, as per the Refurb to which I will come presently. Sometimes, on rare occasions when nobody could be spared, people’s relatives or acquaintances were approached for a bit of odd-jobbing or gardening. Such appointments would last an average of ten minutes up to the point where realisation dawned upon the hireling that the Boss was going to stand over him for the duration offering suggestions and pointing out his or her shortcomings.

“Well, I don’t know what’s the matter with that miserable bugger - one of you’ll have to do it.”

OTHERS

There was no-one else…