Gutta-percha - Fill Your Roots

 

Gutta-percha is a natural latex material obtained from Palaquium trees native to South East Asia. The sap is collected from trees which have been felled and left to coagulate. It has thermoplastic properties making it suitable for many uses including underwater cables and household electrics. It is used in dentistry as a permanent root filling.

Dental gutta-percha was first used over 170 years ago by American dentist and firearms inventor, Edwin Maynard. I was surprised to learn that he would practice in endodontics at a time in history when it was more usual to remove a troublesome tooth. It’s good that he did, as his legacy lives on. Gutta-percha is one of the most successful and widely used options in endodontics. It can completely seal a root canal which prevents bacteria entering the area and reduces the chance of complications.

If you’ve had dental treatment involving root canal therapy, you’ve probably got gutta-percha in there.

I was a trainee dental nurse when everything was old-fashioned by today’s standards. Modern surgeries look easier to clean and sanitise than the creaky contraption of a dental chair that I had to look after. We had sterilisers in the surgeries that had to be kept boiling all day long. Some instruments were sterilised by flaming with methylated spirits in a kidney dish – not so much that the flames reach the ceiling – such instruments included those used in root canal surgery which had to be thoroughly scrubbed first. To the best of my knowledge, these items are now single-use and disposed of immediately. My colleague, Helen, taught me very well, with lots of patience. We were the same age, but she’d left school before me. I could soon mix Kalzinol on a marble tile without too much mess and make amalgam filling to perfection. Dealing with root canal stuff and gutta-percha took longer to learn as it wasn’t an everyday thing. We shared joy, laughter and grievances about our boss. We did our Dental Surgery Assistant night-school course together and, upon completion, we were proud to wear our yellow belts. This was in the days before dental nurses were required to be qualified. Our careers took different paths. Helen stayed in dentistry, I moved away. We were good friends and kept in touch until Helen passed away a few years ago.

My Haiku, about those times,

It was my old days
When surgeries were basic,
Smelled of Kalzinol.

Trainee Dental Nurse
Eager to learn and succeed,
Finding my way round.

The knowledge of teeth
And all that makes their unique
Physiology.

I mixed a filling
With a small, flat spatula
On a marble tile.

What’s this pink stuff for?
I’ve not seen root canal yet.
Lethal looking files.

It’s gutta-percha
For completing root fillings.
We don’t see many.

Appointment for what?
What’s an apicectomy?
Ah! Fascinating.

PMW 2023

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Crackle - Snap, Crackle and Pop

Harbour cottage, Isle of Barra

On our second trip to the Outer Hebrides, we stayed in a fabulous cottage on the Isle of Barra.  It was a restored and extended Crofter’s cottage with many original features including an open fireplace in the ground floor living area. The time of year was May, late spring, early summer and the Hebrides, though breezy, was warmer than expected. Too warm for a log fire but I could imagine the ultimate in cosy.  I read the guest book entries of some amazing winter breaks describing the sound of the crackle and spit of a newly laid log fire. I could picture myself curled up on the sofa with a book or letting my mind wander as I watched darting flames begin to devour the logs. The cottage received regular visitors and it was interesting to read how they liked to spend their time. Hikers, hill climbers, sailors, water sports or observers like me, all had their story to tell.  Someone had been snowed in, but couldn’t have got off the island because of the weather, so had to stay longer. Someone else couldn’t leave the cottage for days due to the danger of gale force winds. Nothing like that happened to us. It didn’t even rain during our stay. The Glasgow to Barra aircraft stayed on schedule, so did the ferries, which was our means of transport.  Everyone who had stayed when it felt chilly had remarked on the brilliant log or coal fire.  I wish I’d set it up just to see it, and hear it snap, crackle and pop.

When I was a child, the only breakfast cereal in our house was cornflakes. At my Nanna’s it was cornflakes or All Bran. Once, I asked for All Bran. It was horrid, but I ate it because I’d asked for it, and that is what happened in those days. If my grandchildren choose something then don’t like it, I’ll find them something else – I’m a softy. At some point, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies made it to our kitchen and true to the advert on TV, as soon as the milk was added ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ happened. It’s funny when you’re only eight and still makes me smile.

My first introduction to John Cooper Clarke was listening to his album, ‘Snap, Crackle and Bop’. It wasn’t the music, it was the words, the clever imagery of Beasley Street and Evidently Chickentown made me laugh. His appearance fascinated me then, about 1980, and unchanged, it still does. I’m reading ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ and trying to make it last because I’ll miss it when it ends.

Here is my poem for JCC,

Terza Rima for John Cooper Clarke, when Manchester became Madchester,

Those of the time embraced every word,
Listening in wonder to John Cooper Clarke,
The Bard of Salford who had to be heard.

Rapid from the mouth and skinny and dark.
‘Evidently Chickentown’, effing good,
He’s magic with words, bright as any spark.

His wholesome description meant that we could
Smell the inhabitants of ‘Beasley Street’;
Rich mixture of urban decay and blood.

Life, humour and truth, a picture complete
And painted with colourful language that
Reaches all listeners not just the elite.

So thanks, JCC, I know where I’m at
Laughing out loud at the poem called ‘Twat’.

Pamela Winning 2012

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and have the best Christmas you can. Pam x

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Coal - Fossil Fuel

     There is something soothing about a coal fire.  It isn’t just the warmth, it’s the welcoming glow
     and the hypnotising darting flames.

I remember a few of us going to a friend’s house after youth club. It was an icy night and we were all very happy to be having a supper of tea and toast with her family in their warm, cosy living room. I was almost falling asleep watching the fire from my slouched position on the sofa. It was only the jovial atmosphere keeping me awake and I might have stayed, as I sometimes did at weekends, but this was a school night and soon I would be back out in the cold, heading home with the others.  It’s funny how things stick in your mind.
 

My grandfather once scared me when he was lighting the fire. I think he’s the one who showed me how to make firelighters out of newspaper. It’s a skill I still have, but no call for it. He was trying to get the fire going and nothing was happening, so he held a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace.  There was a tremendous roar that frightened me and the newspaper was sucked into the hearth which had become a furnace. I wasn’t very old, certainly pre-school age. I ran away in tears looking for my mum or my nanna. That same grandfather, who loved me to bits and I adored him, had a network of blue-grey lines on the backs of his hands, like a road map. He told me it was a result of his short time as a coal miner when he was young, before joining the army for WW1. He never returned to the pit. He went into the licenced trade, starting a family tradition.

 I was watching a neighbour’s coal delivery the other day, fascinated to see that nothing had changed. The wagon had stopped across our driveway, which made me look, and it could have been nineteen-fifty-odd again. The coalman’s jacket and the way he heaved the full sack on his back to carry it, was exactly the same as when had coal delivered to the pubs, before central heating took over.

Welcoming in the New Year always involved a lump of coal, a crust of bread and a shilling or a penny – whatever my father had in his pocket. He would go out of the back door and come in the front, with the said items to ensure heat, food and wealth for the year.

Coal mining accidents and disasters have happened world-wide. I remember Aberfan in 1966 and being horrified at the pictures in the paper. A coal tip created by a nearby colliery slid down a hill on to a junior school, demolishing some of it. Many lives were lost, mostly children. The Minnie Pit Disaster in Staffordshire happened in January, 1918. Over a hundred men and boys lost their lives, forty of the pit lads were under sixteen. It inspired Wilfred Owen to write this poem,

 

Miners

 There was a whispering in my hearth,
    A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
    It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves
    And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests, and the low sly lives
    Before the fauns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
    From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
    Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
    And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
    Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
    Bones without number.
Many the muscled bodies charred,
    And few remember.

I thought of all that worked dark pits
    Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
    Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
    In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
    By our life's ember;

The centuries will burn rich loads
    With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
    While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
    Left in the ground.

 

Wilfred Owen (18/3/1893 – 4/11/1918)

 

Thanks for reading. Keep safe and well. Pam x 

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