Patrick Semple

Just back from Kempten, a town in Bavaria about one hour and forty minutes by train south west of Munich in the beautiful district of the Allgau.
This is the fourth year that I have been invited to Kempten to meet adult English speaking groups and a senior English class at a gymnasium (secondary school in Germany), to give some readings. This all came about after I had had a short story ‘Ted’ broadcast on Lyric FM which had a Christmas theme. Horst and Linde Altstetter, retired teachers from the Allgäu, heard the story in their holiday cottage in Donegal and wrote to ask if they might have a copy of it to use at Christmas with the groups they tutored in English.

Horst & Linde with Donegal goats now naturalised German goats

The following year Horst and Linde invited me to Kempten to meet the groups and to read. There is a full account of all of this in Chapter 4 of ‘Being Published’.

Linde H and P

Each year in addition to meeting the groups I have been invited to give a public reading in International House in the town. This year I read the following:  three pieces ‘Peter’, ‘Jerome’ and ‘The Stout Drinker’ which you can find in ‘Archives’ June 2012 in this part of the website under ‘A Miscellany of Readings and Music’.

I then read an account from ‘Curious Cargo’ of the dramatic events on board a freighter in the Atlantic when Hilary and I, other passengers and crew prepared to abandon ship because of a fire in the engine room. The short story ‘The Archivist’, which you can read or listen to under ‘Short Stories’. When I had finished ‘The Archivist’ an elderly gentleman in the front row was heard to say to his neighbour in a stage whisper: ‘He was pushed’. After the interval I said that although I had written the story I had no idea if he fell or if he was pushed. See what you think.

Falkenstein: 4,189 feet up in the Allgäu Range

I then read the short story ‘The Mother’ (Short Stories), followed by some poems among which was ‘Golf, Golf, Bloody Golf’ , a poem that every golfer should read. You can find it under ‘Poetry’ ‘Other Poems’. At the end of the evening some people wanted a copy of this! I wonder why?

“Wildpoldsrieder Stubenmusik” provided music between readings.

As usual Hilary and I were entertained royally by Horst and Linde with whom we stayed. Also  by that spirited group of women ‘The Hard Tickets’ that Horst has been tutoring for over thirty years who brought us out for a meal.

The Hard Tickets with Horst H and P

By Eva and Martin with whom we had our usual lavish breakfast including white wine! By Dietlinde and Ludwig and their boys, Simon and Johannes, who entertained us to a delightful meal and evening in their home. By Jutta and Fritz who brought us to lunch, after a hair-raising drive, to a restaurant perched on top of a mountain at Falkenstein.

Restaurant Falkenstein, Fritz, Hilary and Jutta

By Claudia who brought us to Ottobeuren to an organ recital by Johannes Lang a talented young organist from Freiburg. We expected it would be in the famous Baroque Basilica there, but it had been relocated to the modern, plain Lutheren Church in the town.

Hilary in The Basilica, Ottobeuren

We came home for a holiday!

The first piece of creative writing I ever did was a short story; it came out of the blue. You can read about the circumstances and what followed in ‘Being Published.’ In the meantime I have had short stories published and broadcast.

Now a collection of short stories will be published in the autumn. Watch this space in due course for news of publication date and details of launch. In the meantime below are recordings of the author reading two of the stories that will be included in the collection. There are more at ‘Short Stories’ on the Home Page.

‘Arthur & Jess‘

‘The Home‘

The Following is an interview with Shauna Gilligan, a friend of mine who has recently published her highly successful and very well received first novel ‘Happiness Comes from Nowhere’. I was honoured to have been asked by her to launch it at NUIMaynooth last October. ‘Happiness Comes from Nowhere’ is an episodic novel that Shauna has melded into a cohesive unity. In it she has addressed some serious life issues through the painting of convinving characters that disappear so that when they reappear you are glad to be with them again. There are amongst the episodes some lovely lighter touches, though still of serious import. In one she indulges her passion for baking and as you read you can smell the cakes freshly out of the oven and beautifully presented on top of the piano. See her website www.shaunaswriting.com
_________________________________

Pat, you have published a great variety of books (poetry, novels, travel, memoir). How does your writing self balance all these different types of writing and, of course, teaching and blogging?

Oh Shauna, I haven’t the remotest idea how to answer this question, but I’ll try. If by ‘self balance’ you mean how do all these different types of writing relate to each other, the simple answer is that the same person has written them all. By that I mean the same life experience and the same perspective on life informs all of them. I don’t think that the form used by the writer matters. It’s what he or she says, the content, that matters and I think in all of these forms you will discover what I have distilled from 73 years of trying to make sense of people and of the mystery that surrounds us. With a different sense of ‘self balance’ the answer to this question may be ‘I just do what I have to do.’

Do you have a preferred form of writing? In other words, which form do you find the best fit for you to express yourself?

I think memoir. Memoir time sequence is pretty simple and straightforward in form, and my travelogue is in effect memoir. Form is much more of an issue in poetry, novel and short story. Insofar as memoir is easier to handle it suits me best. This does mean however that memoir may be lazier but not better writing than the others.

Tell me about your writing life on a daily basis.

I’m a lark and not an owl. In my early years of writing I would get out of bed around six o’clock and in my dressing gown sit straight down at the computer and write before I went to work. If I as much as made a cup of tea I might find something to distract me and not write at all. These days I can make the cup of tea without being distracted. First thing I go over and edit what I wrote the previous morning.I write for two or three hours or even longer depending how it goes. Very occasionally in the afternoon I might do a little editing of the morning’s work if I were going over it in my mind, but that would be rare.

How would you describe yourself as a writer? Do you feel your religious background and the transition from belief to atheism has informed (and formed) you as a writer?

I have great difficulty thinking of myself as a writer. I didn’t start writing prose until I was 48. I always wrote verse, but I would never refer to myself as a poet. Since you ask me, I would describe myself as a Johnny-come-lately amateur. Yes, I do feel that my religious background has informed much of my writing and my transition from belief to atheism in the last ten years has certainly informed my recent writing. I think, however, that what forms a writer is a more complex matter.

What’s your favourite part of the writing life? What part of the life of a writer do you least favour?

Being published, to the first and being rejected to the second.

What writers would you say have had an influence on your writing?

I really don’t know. Perhaps this is for somebody else to glean. I am however conscious occasionally of the influence of Robert Frost on both my prose and verse.

In Being Published you recall how you wrote your first short story at age 48.
“One day I went back to my office after lunch, sat down at my desk and wrote a short story. It was fiction but it was based upon an unlikely couple that I had known who lived in a remote place up the hills in the heart of the country. I called it Bill’s Wife.”
It seems very spontaneous but also brings to mind the advice you often hear – write from what you know. What one line of advice would you give based on this experience?

I’m glad you said ‘one line’ as I’m being verbose. If you feel like writing just sit down and write and don’t worry what anyone else may think of it.

You’ve travelled a lot, some of which you recount in your 2012 Curious Cargo. Can you tell me how travelling puts perspective on Ireland as a country and the Irish? Or does it?

I was born only seventeen years after Independence so as I grew up I heard at every turn the espousal of Ireland and everything Irish, but always felt that ‘self praise is no praise.’ I became aware that this narrow and extravagant Irish Nationalism came from a national inferiority complex that resulted from having been for so long a colonised people. The old saying is true: ‘travel broadens the  mind’. Travel has helped me to put my Irishness, of which I am proud, into perspective in that self conscious nationalism is not exclusive to Ireland but that older more confident nations don’t wear it on their sleeve.

What books are on your bedside table right now?

There are four: Coleridge, Poems and Prose selected by Kathleen Raine. The Journal of Aarland Usher. The Spring 2009 edition of Slightly Foxed. The Poolbeg Golden Treasury of Well Loved Poems. I read in bed only if I can’t sleep and I sleep well!

What’s next for Patrick Semple?

Perhaps a sequel to the novel Transient Beings. Five or six people have said to me words to the effect: ‘You can’t leave it there. What happened next?’  I’m not sure however if I can write a sequel.

‘Being Published’ A Short Introduction to Creative Writing was launched on Thursday 28th February 2013 at the Adult Education Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth by Shauna Gilligan, novelist, by kind invitation of Josephine Finn, Head of Department.

Shauna Gilligan, Patrick Semple, Josephine Finn

Photo by Niamh O’Reilly, used with her kind permission

This is a book about writing and being published. It has been written in two entertaining sections that will be of interest to all aspiring writers.
It starts with a dispatch from the front lines of writing. It is a personal account of Patrick Semple’s inspiration for writing and where his determination to have his work published has taken him. It is a ‘warts and all’ account. It describes the frustration and patience; despair and perseverance; mistakes and learning that an author can go though on the way to being published.
The second section is Patrick’s distillation of the principles of the craft of writing. This is based on the creative writing he teaches at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. It contains important advice and invaluable insights from an experienced and successful writing mentor.
The book’s message is that while being published requires you to have a working knowledge of the craft of writing you also need a realistic appreciation of the industry and how to negotiate its slings and arrows with good humour.
You can read the first chapter of ‘Being Published’ – Read it here

Out for a walk.
Tegan aged three:
‘We forgot to clean our teeth.’
Naiya, take off your coat,
take off your shoes,
put on your slippers,
then you can clean your teeth.
Naiya aged two:
‘Busy day!’

Where did she learn the virago stance;
hands on hips, face like thunder?
‘I’m the boss in this house,’
three years of age.
Playing with her Dad on the floor:
‘Jesus me,’ she exclaimed.
‘You mustn’t say that Tegan.’
‘Is that a bad word, Daddy?’
‘No, but we don’t say it.’
With indignant tone
to mitigate the gravity
of her transgression:
‘Well I only said it to myself.’

I sit on the sofa at 6.45 am
watching cricket on TV
with the sound off.
I’m reading from Paul Durcan’s
latest collection of poetry,
a Christmas present to myself.
I can write poetry like that.
In fact I have written
Paul Durcan-type poetry
but about five grades
below his standard.
Another wicket. Another poem.
I have only one regret in life:
that I didn’t play more cricket.
I read a fair deal of poetry,
but these days
much of it is barely comprehensible,
even to someone who loves poetry.
Thanks be to goodness for Paul Durcan
for poetry I can make sense of and enjoy.
I’m also more than grateful for cricket.

On 11th December Bill O’Herlihy, RTE TV sports presenter, launched ‘Curious Cargo’ a travelogue about voyages that Hilary and I made on freighters to the West Indies, South and Central America and into the Mediterranean. Click on ‘Travel’ on the main website for a full account of the book.

Bill O’Herlihy launching ‘Curious Cargo’

The quickest and cheapest way to buy copies of this book and the novel ‘Transient Beings’ published in October, is by e-mailing: semple.patrick006@gmail.com . They may also be bought from the publisher, Code Green Publishers and from the online bookstores mentioned on the main website.  Both books  cost € 10 excluding postage. They can be ordered by local bookstores by quoting the title, author and publisher.

Until recently so obsessively religious was Irish society that to be an atheist was to be a pariah. To a lesser extent this is still so today. On his recent visit to England the Pope likened atheists to Nazis. To be fair to the Pope his attack was on ‘atheist extremism’ and ‘aggressive secularism’. The Church herself, however, was pretty ‘extreme’ and ‘aggressive’ in her own time to the extent of supporting torture and having people burned for heresy.
I don’t know what the attitude of the Pope is to the ordinary decent atheist who in conscience simply finds it impossible to believe that there is a God and has no desire to convert anybody else to his or her point of view. He also warned against ‘the exclusion of religion and virtue from public life.’ It is an old canard that to be atheist is not to have a moral code. This is simply false.
Agnostics say they don’t know if there is a God or not. To be a Christian agnostic is to acknowledge doubt but to opt for believing that there is a God. Atheists believe there is no God.
Atheism is about belief;it is not a religion. There is no conclusive proof that there is or is not a God. People become atheist for different reasons. I have a friend who decided at the age of twelve that he could not believe what he was being taught about Christianity and decided that there was no God. Now in his seventies, he has been a quiet atheist ever since and has been perfectly content to be so.
The doctrines of religions are simply not believable to atheists because most of these doctrines were formulated in a pre-scientific age when people believed in a three decker universe and all that went with that. Furthermore why would a God create a universe of such unfathomable immensity and choose one tiny planet on which to put humans to the test; to judge them worthy of heaven or hell? Why in the first place would a God create a world in which there is so much evil? Why would an all powerful, all loving, all merciful God not intervene to spare the human suffering of the Holocaust, thousands of children dying daily of starvation, people dying in earthquakes and other natural disasters? – Divine absence. These and many other matters are the reason that atheists believe that there is no God. Religious people have their own answers to these problems, but their answers are not credible to atheists.
I found in my late sixties, having spent 33 happy and fulfilling years in the ministry of The Church of Ireland, that I could no longer believe there was a God. A friend told another friend of mine that if that’s what I believe I should keep it to myself. Why should religion, when so many people believe it to be falsely based, hold a sacrosanct position in society? A number of people who are committed believers have said that they feel sorry for me that I don’t have the comfort of religion. Of course I understand that for some people religion is a help to them in negotiating their way through this precarious world. On the contrary, however, not believing in God has relieved me of the need to struggle with the metaphysical doctrines of Christianity and helps me to make more sense of the world.
I have a friend, a theologian and faithful member of the Church, with whom I have wonderful discussions. We talk about the kind of issues I have mentioned and neither of us is trying to convert the other to his point of view. We live and let live.
Many atheists, while rejecting religion’s supernatural beliefs, acknowledge the value of its moral, social and ritual aspects. This is the subject of Alain de Botton in his book, Religion for Atheists.
There are aggressive atheists who ridicule people of sincere religious belief and there are religious people who consider atheists pariahs. Neither position is defensible. All are entitled to their view, but nobody is entitled to force their view on others.
Atheism is just another way of trying to make sense of the mystery that surrounds us.

Leo Cullen introducing Frank Kelly (Fr Jack)

Hilary at end of table

Signing a book for son, Ben

Ladies in front, men behind

Frank Kelly, Self, Leo Cullen

A serious business

Another book launch. Curious Cargo, a cargo ship travel book will be launched on 11th December, in the Knox Hall, Monkstown. (Full details later). It is an account of two voyages on cargo ships that Hilary, my wife, and I sailed on, one to the Caribbean, the West Indies and South and Central America for five weeks and the second for four weeks into the Mediterranean. It gives an account of life at sea on a freighter and of trips ashore in interesting places while vessels are in port. Threaded through these accounts are ruminations that are stimulated by time at sea without the pressures of everyday life; thoughts about politicians, bankers, the stars, the universe and the meaning of life itself. See http://www.codegreenpublishing.com/media.html Further details on this site soon. You are warmly invited to attend the launch. (It is customary in polite society to apologise for punning, and this I do. Twice!)

You may have come straight here by clicking on ‘For the latest Click Here’. Do of course scroll down and see if you find something of my musings that is of interest to you. When you have finished, may I suggest that you return to the home page and click on ‘Novel’, where you will find details of my latest book ‘Transient Beings’.

It is as you will see a novel about the dynamics of a country parish in the heart of rural Ireland in the 1970s. If you decide to read it, and needless to say I hope you do,
you will learn something of the inside story of life in a rural rectory. It may surprise you.

There is, I believe, a self-help organisation the name of which is the acronym WOMB Now you might think that its purpose is mutual support for women who are unable to conceive, or even those who conceive too easily. A friend of ours said in the early years of her marriage that all her husband had to do for her to become pregnant was to throw his trousers on the bed. You might think that WOMB might be for women with some rare gynaecological problem or for those who had difficulties coping with the aftermath of hysterectomies. Not so. You would be wrong. WOMB stands for Wives Of Mean Bastards.

If you are not married to one, you can’t have the remotest idea what hell it is to live with a mean bastard. When I say ‘mean’, that’s not a man who is tight with money and careful to make the family budget balance. I don’t mean one who still has his communion money, wears his shirts until the collars are frayed, or wears his shoes until he is walking along beside them. No, mean bastards are from another planet.

A mean bastard will read the electricity meter before he goes to work to be sure his wife does not use more than the daily allocation of units he allows her. He probably brings the telephone receiver to work with him to ensure that she cannot make calls during the day. When his wife goes to the supermarket do the week’s shopping she must bring home the receipt for her husband’s inspection to check that she hasn’t bought any unnecessary item and those that she has bought are not of the more expensive brands. When his wife needs a new pair of tights she must bring him the old pair for inspection to be sure they are no longer usable.

Well, you may think some wives are spendthrifts, which can be a serious problem. Their husbands may have to keep a tight rein on the family purse strings in the struggle to make ends meet. This may well be so, but this is not the profile of your average mean bastard. No, the average mean bastard is a well heeled member of one of the professions or runs a successful business. He probably drives a top of the range BMW or Jaguar while his wife drives a ten or fifteen year old clapped out Nissan Micra. He is likely to be a hail-fellow-well-met member of a golf club where he is known as a generous buyer of drinks for all and sundry. For the club annual dinner or for business social events his wife appears in the most expensive outfit that he keeps under lock and key and hands out for the night.

If you were married to man like that, in order to survive you would have two options. Save up secretly from your tights allowance and buy a gun or join WOMB. The latter would have fewer complications, but you would probably have to walk to meetings.

Amongst a number of miniature portraits in the Castle of Nieuschwanstein, Bavaria, built by the eccentric if not mad, King Ludwig II, friend and admirer of Wagner, is one of the Irishwoman Lola Montez.  There are many criteria by which one can be deemed to be Irish, and the most common is to have been born here.  If that is the case then Lola Montez was Irish, despite the Duke of Wellington’s aphorism that being born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.
As with many colourful figures in history, it can be difficult to discern fact from fiction in Lola’s life.  That she was born in Ireland does not appear to be in doubt, but the question is when and where.   The options are that she was born in Limerick in 1818 or that she was born in Grange, Co. Sligo in 1821; the latter is probably the case. She was christened Eliza Rosanna, the daughter of a British officer by the name of Gilbert and she claimed her mother was a Spanish beauty, but it appears that her mother was not Spanish, but the illegitimate daughter of Charles Oliver, of the Irish Oliver family and a member of the Westminster Parliament.
When Eliza was two she moved to India with her parents where, shortly after their arrival, her father died.  Her mother re-married the following year and in 1826 aged five, Eliza was sent back to Scotland to live with relatives of her stepfather.  In 1832, aged 11, she was sent to boarding school in Bath, England.  When she was 16 she married a Lieut. Thomas James who had accompanied her mother back to England from India.  The marriage was short-lived and Eliza had a number of liaisons before disappearing to Spain from where she returned to England as Lola Montez, saying that she was the daughter of a Spanish noblewoman.  Early on she claimed that her real name was “Maria Dolores Porris y Montez”, but after she finally admitted that she was born in Ireland and not in Spain she used Lola Montez.

                                                                              Lola

In 1843 she made her debut in London as a Spanish dancer.  She invented a Tarantula Dance during which she would discover a large furry spider in her garments and removed many of them while she expelled the spider.  Three years later she danced in Munich before King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the mad king’s father, who was smitten by her and took her as his mistress.  On his birthday in 1847 he made her Countess of Landsfeld.  The following year 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, Lola was forced by an angry mob to flee and subsequently Ludwig was forced to abdicate, in no small measure because of her.
In 1851 she turned up in the United States and lived by her dancing.  She moved from the east coast to California in 1853 and married Patrick Hull, a marriage about which little is known.  This was the time of the California Gold Rush and Lola was reduced to dancing for the miners who didn’t always receive her well.  She made a living by giving dancing lessons to the children of miners.   She is reputed to have kept a pet bear in her front garden and could be seen walking it on a lead.
After her Grass Valley, California, house, little more than a cabin, was destroyed by fire Lola took her dance routine to Australia where she toured for a year with no notable success and then returned to New York.  There she lived by giving lectures on the use of cosmetics.
During her busy life she wrote ‘The Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet with Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascination’ and ‘Lectures of Lola Montez Including Her Autobiography.’  Lola was one of the more colourful characters of the 19th century and much contradictory information has been published about her.  Some of this comes from her own autobiography – a source of much of the misinformation about her.   Other fable came from ‘memoirs’ and ‘biographies’ during her lifetime.
No matter what we may think of her, Lola was a woman of character and determination.  She overcame the insecurities of her early life by turning herself into a famous character of the world of entertainment.

                                                                   Ludwig I

The pinnacle of her short life was as mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, which ended in circumstances that were beyond what even Lola could influence.  Nothing daunted, she re-invented herself and travelled halfway round the world doing what she could do best – dance and live the theatrical life that was the essence of who she was.
At one time much was made of the impoverished conditions in which she lived in New York, but it has been shown that in fact she lived her last years there in modest comfort.  She died of pneumonia aged 40 in January 1861, having gone out on a bitterly cold day shortly after she had recovered from a mild stroke. She was buried in Green-Wood cemetery, Brooklyn.

We need them. They are heroic. They should each be awarded a medal for gallantry, in the sense of noble, to hang beside their framed certificate of qualification for poking around and excavating in people’s mouths all of their working lives.

Is there a more feared profession than that of dentist? I know a woman who attends her dentist only when absolutely necessary. Between making her appointment and keeping it she is in quite a state. By the time she arrives in the waiting-room she is in a high state of anxiety, or even fear, and she is no longer into the surgery than she is likely to faint; fall over, flat out. Needless to say her dentist and his nurse are prepared for this and are ready catch her. She will almost certainly faint in the chair.

This may be an extreme case, but a significant proportion of the population fear the dentist. I can only surmise that this is because they’re not too keen on pain. It may be that they have an irrational fear of needles or it may be both.

To hear some dentiphobes talking you would think that, as a breed, dentists are sadistic, evil people who revel in causing pain and distress.  Of course they are not. They are like any other group of people doing the same job; amongst them there are warm kindly ones, pleasant ones, all-right ones, unpleasant ones and shysters.

I suspect that how adults feel about having their teeth seen to is largely determined by their experiences of the dentist in childhood. However, since causes are frequently multi-factorial it is probable that pain thresholds, quality of teeth, to which of the above categories their dentist belongs and other things are also factors.

My own early childhood experience of the family dentist was good. He was a genial man who did his best to put me at my ease while he chatted to my mother about the news, gossip and scandal of the town. The only other local dentist at the time had a contrary reputation, but of him I had no first-hand experience. The treat for being good at the dentist was a bag of marshmallows which I had to share with my sister when I arrived home. This I considered entirely unjust.

By the time I had returned on a visit to the town of my birth as an early teenager there was a third dentist in practice. In the early 1950s he had been a member of the IRA and when he was eventually freed from internment in the Curragh a band and large crowd of supporters went out the road to meet him and welcome him home. With a raging tooth ache I was unable to make an appointment with either of the two older practitioners and had to settle for the liberated terrorist.  He was pleasant enough but a bit rough. He extracted the tooth. I might still be in possession of that tooth if he had made an effort to save it. In those days some dentists took out teeth that if they were to take them out today they would probably be guilty of, at best, malpractice and, at worst, criminal assault.
During my life to date I have lived at ten different addresses around Ireland, which means I have had, as an adult, a variety of dentists of varying personality and professional competence. I am fortunate that I have good teeth that give me little trouble. Hilary my wife is the opposite; she has soft teeth that cause her endless problems. In my early thirties, not having been to a dentist for seven years Hilary convinced me that I ought to have a check-up. I did, but there was nothing to be done but have my teeth cleaned. That particular dentist was more interested in rugby than dentistry. I have no fear of dentists; I seldom need an injection to have a filling and on one occasion I even dozed off in a dentist’s chair.

I brought our two children aged about ten and twelve to another dentist who despite not having to do anything but clean their teeth, gave each of them a whiff of gas without consulting me. Having discovered this at home I phoned him to register my protest. He trivialised the matter and told me that a letter I threatened to write to the dentists’ professional body would arrive with him anyway as he was currently president of that body! He fell into the last category of dentists mentioned above!

I have no hesitation in saying that my present dentist, and almost certainly he will be my last, is without doubt the best one I have ever had. He is kindly, good humoured, explains everything clearly and above all he is highly professional. He even gave our adult daughter, who has teeth like blotting paper, his home number to use in case of an out-of-hours emergency; an egregious act of supererogation. So far she hasn’t needed to use it.

I have one question for dentists. How in the name of goodness, if you rinse out your mouth after cleaning your teeth can toothpaste adhere to your teeth to protect them from heat and cold? Perhaps the manufacturers include glue in the mix! However, who am I, a defunct cleric, to question the denizens of the world of dentistry?

There’s only one thing worse than a tricky dentist and that’s a tricky dentist’s receptionist. With one dentist I would phone and ask for an appointment with Mr. Nameless. In a supercilious tone his receptionist would immediately say something like: ‘Dr. Nameless is booked up until October 2047. Please hold the line.’ She would then come back and say: ‘Dr Nameless has a cancellation on Friday.’

The moral of the story is: guard carefully your teeth. That’s why boxers and rugby players wear gumshields. Bear in mind too that they are the second most private part of you.

I now return to my first dentist, Dentist Doyle, who would have been highly amused to be called ‘Doctor’. At the age of 90 he filled his last cavity. According to the photograph, he’s still at it!