• IN this age of litigation and remembrance of past hurts, can I point out a group in their middle age who have been overlooked?

Years ago in the 1960s when Finsbury resembled Dublin with its small terraces and shops, and bombsites here and there like patches of countryside, we were in a gang of very competitive children who played in the street, and had a series of running, jumping and skipping contests.

Then one day a red-haired Italian boy called Victor announced that we should have a fillings competition, and that he was the one to run it because he had 12 fillings. My sister duly counted our fillings and said that I was the winner with 13 fillings. My sister had a similar count.

May I add that we were primary schoolchildren and these were baby teeth. I know that my sister and I had no prior problems and I think it was scandalous treatment as it wrecked our secondary teeth.

It was done in the name of preventative measures, but this masks the fact that it was only true in the sense that it prevented us from having a healthy mouth. A woman of a similar age to me at work was told that she had more fillings than teeth.

I was in a charity shop in Victoria recently and, on being offered a sweet, I declined and told them that my teeth were ruined when I was young. To my astonishment the Australian volunteer said that she had heard about Australian dentists back in the day honing their skills on the children of London.

These young Dr Kildare-like figures could do no wrong, and they talked their way through the procedures with a lot of flannel and our parents accepted it. It was free. It was on the National Health. What could be wrong with that?

A dentist I met said that they mistook the slightly darker centre of the baby teeth for decay, but it was the normal line of the tooth.
Another dentist said that she sees a certain generation of patients with a mouth full of patched-up fillings and missing teeth.

ANNETTE BROOKER
Central Street, EC1