Doctors and Dentists

As a child there are other children and there are adults. Excepting parents and very close relatives, for children most adults are off the radar. But there are exceptions.

In Alresford when I grew up there were two doctors. My parents generally frequented Dr. Leishman, the older and more serious of the two. Leishman is an apt name for a doctor - it is "the Scottish form of the name "Leachman" or "Leechman", from the Old English "laece", leech, and "mann", servant of the physician, hence, someone who used leeches in helping a physician, to cure somebody." Doubtless he must have been involved in the matter of my tonsils removal but what I remember is having jabs and an embarrassing appointment after I had, in great fear of loosing my manhood, reported to my father a swelling on my penis. By the time the doctor inspected me all was well and I remember he then took my father aside out of my earshot. What passed between them I shall never know but for ever after I have honoured them because nothing more was ever said on the subject. It taught me a lesson which I have often sought to apply that discretion is the better part of valour. Of the other doctor, Riley by name, I only remember as being a younger man.

There was a master at school, a good teacher who I respected and who knew how to keep order. But then in those days there was such a thing as the cosh. He once gave me a taste of it, I think he was making an example of me and he didn't hit too hard, more as a warning maybe. Maybe not. He taught maths and games. After games we all had to strip and use the communal shower - when younger this involved running through it as fast as possible so as to avoid getting too wet. Only in later years did it occur to me that a shower could be pleasurable. The fact that we were all in various stages of undress didn't particularly bother anyone - it was just the way it was. On one occasion the said master came through the boys' changing room just as I had returned, still wet, from the shower. He picked me up by the shoulders and shook me vigorously up and down. Apart from a slight annoyance at being picked on I thought no more about it until more recently when I have wondered if there was anything sexual in it. Even if there had been I would not have, either then or now, wanted to accuse him and I do not believe it did me any harm. But I guess it might be the closest I have ever got to being molested.

In case you wonder at my accolade "good teacher" - there were plenty of bad ones! I do not mean morally bad (how should I know their morals?), but bad at teaching. And so it came as a pleasant surprise to be taught by someone who could both keep order and instill interest.

We had numerous RE teachers of various abilities but one stands out. I cannot remember his name but he was a sincere youngish man and I respected him. I remember him reading so very passionately David's lamentation over Saul and Jonathan "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!" and explaining to us pagans how much David must really have loved these his enemies. On another occasion the subject of sex came up and I remember him informing the whole class how the act of sex was the most beautiful and pleasurable expression between man and woman and that we should be careful to cherish it as so.  Such remarks do not go unnoticed.

Mr Hutchins was our family's dentist. His surgery was in Jewry Street, Winchester and he was stout. Very. As a child I remember wondering how he could possibly get close enough to my mouth without his stomach getting in the way. Or, however did he tie his shoe laces up? I used to suck my thumb (my parents did not approve of pacifiers). They had tried all sorts to stop this habit including that bitter stuff that gets painted on, whose taste I rather liked. And then on one visit Mr Hutchins told me I had to stop sucking my thumb otherwise my teeth would be crooked and, just like that, I stopped and never did it again. If only the same resolve could touch my other bad habits! On another occasion I had four extractions to make room for other teeth (so they said) and this involved gas as a general anaesthetic. I suppose I was "out" for only a few minutes. I remember the rubber smell of the face mask and the fast, furious and intense dream which followed, featuring a sort of octagonal gallery or tower in which I think I was being chased around and around..

Mr Gregory was our family's solicitor and another notary in my life. He was, I suppose, the author of the present-day Dutton Gregory Solicitors and, to me, he was the epitome of the ideal professional citizen. Back then I remember his habitual performance of O Holy Night at the Alresford Christmas-around-the-tree celebration, to the accompaniment of my father on the piano. Later it would be he who drew up wills for both my mother and father.

Barbara was a friend of the family, I suppose in her twenties when I was very young. Oft times I was sent to the kitchen in disgrace, because I hadn't eaten everything on my plate. Strange that few parents require this of their children now-a-days. She would come and rescue me, help me to finish what had by then become cold and glutenous, perhaps she even ate some herself. Clearly an angel. When asked (at that tender age) whom I might marry I vehemently decried the idea but conceded that if I were forced it would be Barbara.

Mr DCF was the chief elder at the church I grew up attending. To me he was the ultimate, all-knowing, could-do-no-wrong, Godly man. I have since learned, after bitter experience, how dangerous it is to set anyone on a pedestal like that.

Miss Wellman was one of my Sunday school teachers. She was aged, a dear, had white hair and I remember her for her gentleness towards us children. I suppose I ought to be able to recall some of her lessons but I regret I cannot. I only have a vague recollection of being herded from the church sanctuary to a nearby office where the lesson was conducted.

Joe Bush was the local itinerant youth evangelist. He was an older man with white hair and gentle yet severe in principles, and loved by all. He held tent crusades throughout Hampshire and sometimes preached at NFC. I remember one occasion when he came up to talk to my mother after the meeting and turned to me and earnestly encouraged me to respect her. I hadn't been aware that I didn't but I took that instruction to heart for I deeply respected this man.

I have spoken of EW aka the whirlpool elsewhere. I could mention my best friend's parents, his father never resting but always out gardening, his mother's most excellent chipped potatoes and fried fish, his grandmother's licking her knife then dunking it in the tomato ketchup bottle. Or my other friend's parents, father who I reckoned could make anything mechanical, his mother's spaghetti dish that I liked so much - in which the tomato sauce was reduced to solid bits which stuck to the strands of pasta. And the fat and thin Miss Curtis's. And here my roll-call is degenerating a bit like Hebrews 11: And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of...