Hi Andrew,
In the spirit of your invitation for "snippets" I
am writing, with a few hours to go until movement restrictions in NSW are
lifted. I sold my dental practice in Nelson Bay 3 years ago with part of the
deal that I stay on for a year. A bit surprised to be informed close to that
time being up that I was not needed to continue after the "earn-out",
but the lady who bought me out intended to have another baby and they needed
someone to stand-in fulltime for her while that happened, and we all realised
that was definitely not in my plans, so we parted amicably and I found myself
out of a job after 42 years of dentistry. Great timing as Covid unfolded
shortly afterwards and I was relieved not to have a business to run. I had
already started volunteering for a dental charity, Filling The Gap, based in
Sydney, so I could give that more emphasis. It became evident that they really
needed someone to concentrate on providing dentures for our clients, and being
an old guy with lots of experience in that unglamorous field, I now head up the
denture clinic. Not something they teach now to younger graduates, but we treat
lots of recovering addicts, homeless, refugees, victims of domestic violence,
recent gaol inmates and people with social and psychiatric problems, and their
dental state can be pretty poor, so they need dentures for self-esteem and to
eat, so our treatment has a really big positive effect on their lives. I enjoy
the time spent with our clients, they are definitely interesting and a change
from my former private practice crowd, and it makes one reflect that it only
takes one or two bad choices or unlucky breaks to be in a different world from
our privileged surroundings. So after being locked down and locked out I am
looking forward to getting back to work soon with the clinic.
After selling my practice I rewarded myself with a new boat,
a Beneteau First 18 which sounds large and expensive but is actually small (and
still expensive). I convinced Warwick S. to come to Lake Garda in northern
Italy for a week to test-sail the class and we had a great time burning around
the lake. A new experience, to sail while it was snowing on the mountains
around us, in spectacular scenery. Now I manage to sail twice a week and the
boat is starting to perform better as experience grows. Racing has been in
recess during lockdown but we have still managed "exercise" regularly
on Port Stephens.
My wife Gail and I now have 3 grandchildren, to our 2
daughters, but one of them lives over the Wall, on the Gold Coast, and the
other in Sydney, so it has been a long lockdown being separated from them. I
can now spend more time with my trains and am enjoying restoring my childhood
trains and also building a scale tribute to the railway in Broken Hill. Travel,
as for everybody, is in recess, but a couple of trips to northern Australia are
planned for 2022. My passport will gather dust for a while yet.
I am enjoying life, appreciating good health, family and
friends. Pretty damn good.
Cheers
Andy Parsons
