Pulling teeth

Kim was clearing up the other day and found the two items pictured on the right. They have prompted me to make a confession of two parts of my life which I have kept close to my chest for fear of attracting universal opprobrium.  Yes, I fear it`s true I have worked both for the Inland Revenue and in the manufacture of dental forceps!
  Now, it`s not a bit of use after your initial dismay, coming to me with your tax queries. I was the most inept Tax Officer that can be imagined, and came within a whisker of being dismissed for incompetence. This was in fact not really my fault, but that of the interview board when I sought a job with the Civil Service. The initial idea was a job with the Forestry Commission where perhaps I could have seen the wood from the trees. However the Board insisted that I should go to the Tax Office.  I even demurred pointing out that maths was not my strong suit. They replied that only simple arithmetic was required in the Tax Office, adding,subtracting etc. I opened my mouth to say that this was precisely the area I had problems with, but then I closed it again, realising that a candidate who confessed to disnumeracy was unlikely to be offered a job in ANY department .
  I served a number of years in the Revenue, even getting promoted mainly by having the sense to buy one of the earliest pocket calculators on the market, but I must warn any aspiring Tax Officers that the job is the only one I`ve found which is both difficult and BORING at the same time, something I would have thought impossible before.
  In the event the job nearly drove me to suicide and both I and the Revenue decided to part more or less simultaneously (I resigned in the nick of time)
  Being temporarily unemployed, a new and unpleasant experience, I decided with Kim`s encouragement to seek a job in Plymouth rather than at Portsmouth where I`d ended up thanks to the Admiralty (another story) Although I`d nearly always done office jobs I somehow landed a job in a factory making dental forceps as a Filer.  I discovered an unexpected facility in a craftsman`s job which was the perfect antidote to Civil Service life. Working to transform rough stainless steel forgings to the gleaming works of art pictured above brought a strange satisfaction and if you`ve suffered from one of my masterpieces just think, you`ld have suffered far worse from an untreated toothache!