Reading "Islands of Angry Chosts - The Story of the BATAVIA" by Hugh Edwards helped me ignore the sound of the drill as it was applied to someone else's teeth, knowing that as soon as the sound had stopped, I would hear, "Peter, you're next!"
And so I was and, frankly, I didn't mind, as these days the dentist is just about the only place I'm still allowed to open my mouth. Actually, the only pain I felt was not from the drill but from the news that BHP had reported a fall in profits of 32% and a drop in interim dividends to 90 US cents which prompted its shares to drop by more than a dollar. By the time my treatment was done, the shares had recovered - and so had I.
Anyway, to let me go gently into toothlessness, I bribe the dentist with Christmas presents and the occasional bottle of wine, and just now with thirteen books by Enid Blyton which should give his two little daughters, aged just five and six, enough to read until they enter dental college.
I grew up with Struwwelpeter and never read any Enid Blyton books. If I had, I might've noticed some subtle changes; for example, in the Magic Faraway Tree series, Fanny is now Frannie and cousin Dick is now cousin Rick, and Dame Slap, a teacher who used corporal punishment, was updated to Dame Snap, a teacher who would only yell at children.
Enid Blyton's books have been far more extensively edited: "mother and father" have become "parents" (presumably to allow for same-sex "parents"); the word “fat” has been cut from every new edition of relevant books as has the word “ugly”; Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who used to be "enormously fat" is now just "enormous"; in The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer "ugly and beastly" but just "beastly"; in The Witches who are bald beneath their wigs, this paragraph has been added: "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that".
References to "female" characters have disappeared, with Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a "most formidable female", now described as a "most formidable woman"; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas who were once "small men" are now "small people"; the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach have become Cloud-People; and the word "black" has been removed from the description of the terrible tractors in 1970s "The Fabulous Mr. Fox" - the machines are now simply "murderous, brutal-looking monsters". To paraphrase Henry Ford about his Model T, you can mention any colour as long as it isn't black!
By the time we've sorted out our new politically-correct language and how many genders there are and which toilet each of them will be using, we will be so f#*&ed up, no enemy will bother to invade us and we can all safely sit on our beaches and lick the good ol' Gaytime icecream which, unlike the COON cheese and thanks to lengthy consultations with the LGBTQIA+ community, could keep its name. If I had enough teeth left, you'd see me smiling through clenched ones.
But back to books: I also lashed out on a copy of "The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion" and "Fields of Blood - Religion and the History of Violence" (both of which are on archive.org - is there anything left that's not on archive.org? - but you know me: I need to hold the book in my hand, feel its texture, turn the pages, smell the ink) and Sean Dorney's "Papua New Guinea - People, Politics and History since 1975", by which time I had already left.
And while I still had my hands in my pocket, I also bought "The Lives of Others" and the National Geographic Channel documentary "Secret Life of Pearls - Journey of the Australian South Sea Pearl" which is about the Paspaley pearl farms off the Western Australian coast but could just as easily be of Paspaley's pearl farms in the Torres Strait where I lived and worked in 1976. I've just found this shorter version on YouTube:
If you're watching this, Victor Aung, I hope it brings back memories!
