Long in the tooth and fearing the pain 5 published : 21 Feb 2021 at 04:00 5 Ever since the horrors of the school dentist who had an uncanny knack of hitting the nerve, I have always regarded dental visits with some trepidation. The very word "extraction" is enough to spark spasms of terror. So last week, as I was sitting in a dentist's chair in Bangkok about to have a misbehaving tooth extracted, I was not exactly a vision of joy. Being something of a coward when it comes to this sort of thing, I was frantically trying to think of something to distract me from the approaching agony. But all that came to mind was a dentist with the unfortunate name of Dr Yankum, who once featured in a PostScript article about aptonyms. Dr Yankum immediately triggered memories of the school dentist, which only made me more nervous.