Papworth latest

The answer is: perfectly well. In fact, there is now talk that he might be allowed home next Wednesday - just two weeks after the operation - and he looked so bright and well today that he seemed able to come home today. Only managing the medication and undergoing necessary biopsies to control anti-rejection will cause any delay, as he seems incredibly fit and raring to go. One of the blessings of the operation is he is now able to sleep horizontally. Before the operation, problems with his breathing had meant that he had needed four pillows to prop him up in bed.

When we arrived, he had his shirt undone so that you could see the scar, which runs exactly down the centre of his chest, from just under his collarbone to just above his navel, but is surprisingly neat. This is really the only outward clue that he has undergone a major operation.

There will still be some restrictions for the next year - for example, no flying - as the hospital keeps the possibility of rejection of the new heart under control. While I was there, a nurse explained that even if his body starts to reject, there are plenty of drugs they can give him to suppress it.

The whole thing still seems miraculous to me, and you need to see it with your own eyes to even begin to appreciate it.

Practice making perfect

I was amazed at how easily the others could play these, and quite pleased that I could drum along too - mostly correctly, if not quite as accurately as if I had time to learn them.

The hardest thing is the end of songs. Whereas lots of recorded songs end with a fade-out, you can't do this live, so the big challenge of playing in a band is coming up with an appropriate ending - and then all stopping in the right place. This is especially challenging for the poor drummer, who is almost always the key to the ending. I also have big moments in songs such as All Right Now, which has a crucial drum lick at the end of the guitar solo. This seems easy enough, but I've spent weeks trying to get it in the right place. In the first run through of it tonight I got it dead right - but then got over-confident in the second run through and blew it.

Time seems to have moved on quickly, and whereas we had originally hoped to have been playing in front of audiences by now, it seems that it will be August or September before we get to play our dreaded first gig - partly because of problems with getting the right halls to practise in, on the right days.

Still, we are in no hurry and it's going pretty well. Not only are we making quite a nice sound already, but we're all enjoying it.

Miracles

He was actually awake and talking last night - only six hours after the operation, but could remember nothing of that today, because of the drugs. So, when he woke up this morning, it was with the realisation, all over again, that he had a new heart. Although he was obviously pleased, he wasn't as excited as I expected, and I don't think the implications of this have properly sunk in just yet, nor the relief.

According to the doctor, they found his old heart was "a bit of a mess", three times larger than a normal heart and very close to failing completely.

He looked only slightly shaky but bright-eyed and also the right colour (or so I am told, not being able to see colours properly myself), as he told me that he now felt "like I could go for a run", whereas walking short distances recently left him breathless. He said he had literally forgotten what it was like to feel so fit during the three-and-a-half years that he's had heart problems. While I was there, a nurse removed the last significant tube from his body, and he was sitting up in the chair before I left the hospital. Tomorrow he will almost certainly be moved from 'critical care' (intensive care), back to the ward, because he was the fittest of the five people in his mini-ward (all the others had had bypasses).

And if all this didn't already seem like science fiction, I found out other things that I wouldn't have believed were possible. Ron has become notorious for volunteering and signing up for things during his treatment, and the main thing that he has been helping to trial has been a pioneering 'beating heart in a box' system whereby a donor heart is literally kept beating inside a special box while it awaits transplanting. This was first carried out at Papworth in 2006 and will eventually replace the old-fashioned method of packing it in ice, which is only good for four to six hours. The advantage of the new method is the heart lasts for much longer - probably 24 hours - so when this eventually becomes the routine way of doing it, it will be possible to transplant hearts internationally. The recovery period is also shorter. One of the doctors had a video of one of these beating hearts in a box - not Ron's donor heart - on his mobile phone. It looked like something out of a B horror movie, but is the kind of cutting edge technology that Papworth is famous for.

Another thing that Ron signed up for was to be part of a Channel 5 documentary, which filmed the operation and such things as the surgeon advising family members of progress, and one striking image that has apparently come out of this - which hasn't been made available yet - is the surgeon holding the old heart in one hand and the new one in his other hand. I'm embarrassingly squeamish about such things, but even I should be persuaded to peep out from behind a cushion to see that.

Just to show that even surgeons are human, though, it turns out that the one who performed the operation yesterday didn't take out Ron's pacemaker, which was fitted a couple of years ago. He apologised and said he simply forgot, but said that by the end of the operation he had been feeling pretty tired. It can be easily removed by local anaesthetic as it's close to the skin and the wires are obviously no longer connected to anything.

Another thing that has emerged is that the new heart hadn't arrived at the hospital when the operation began.

Ron is expected to stay in hospital for about two weeks but will need to stay close by for another two weeks after that, so he can go in for regular (presumably daily) check-ups. In the meantime, he is also on anti-rejection drugs, but the main drawback to his recovery seems to be with his ribs which had to be broken during the operation, so the surgeon could get access to the heart. For some reason, because he had had this done before, during previous open heart surgery, his recovery will be slower. They are saying it will be six months until he can play tennis, for instance, instead of the usual three.

I also learned that when patients are given a new heart, it is impossible to transplant the nerves that are normally attached to it, and the problem with this is that the heart cannot 'sense' changes properly. Therefore, standing up too quickly can lead to a blackout, for instance, because the heart doesn't automatically know that it needs to pump quicker. So heart transplant patients have to be taught to do things slower and, for example, warm up thoroughly before playing sports.

Our family seems to have had a lot thrown at it in the last two or three years, but has come out smiling once again. As well as Ron, there was also my other brother, Maurice, who had a successful bone marrow transplant to cure leukaemia, 19 months ago. Then there's my great neice, Millie, who is a perfectly normal, healthy toddler, despite being born absurdly premature; my cousin Pete is back at work after surviving a near fatal blood clot in his stomach; and my cousin's wife, Jane, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, also seems to be well on the way to recovery. When you add in Holly and my nephew Stuart, who are diabetic but lead virtually normal lives, that's a minibus load of people who are still around but wouldn't have been here but for incredible advances in various branches of medical science and care.

I find myself increasingly awed by this with each passing day. Or, as was the case today, with each passing minute.

See Ron's son (my nephew) Stuart's excellent blog for more.

Phew

He had his heart transplant at Papworth today, and the operation went as planned, with no complications. I only have sketchy details so far, but the main thing is that he has a new heart which is beating strongly. He should be conscious by the end of the day.

As I understand it, a heart became available, late last night, from a donor in Northern Ireland, and after a surgeon flew over to check it and collect it, they started the operation at about 9.30am this morning (Wednesday), and completed it at 1pm.

It's been a very long morning in Swindon, so goodness knows what it was like for his wife, Jenny, and their three sons at Papworth, but we now have the best news so far in Ron's three-and-a-half years of heart problems.

UnBEATable

It's an annual event in which all the musicians in the school go through a qualifying round to get to the grand final, where he found himself up against three flautists, some singers, a cornet player, a guitarist and another drummer. He played along to a rock backing track that's perfect for drums as it allows plenty of intricate fills.

The adjudicator was a former pupil who's now a professional saxophonist in London (apparently working for Andrew Lloyd Webber's company). She said Sean was "amazing" and gave a performance "that I would have expected from a professional". Perhaps even more significantly, Sean said that, despite the pressure, it was the best he'd ever played that piece. It would have been so easy to crack in that situation.

And if that wasn't enough, Holly had also won through to the final with her violin - one of five finalists in her year (Year 8) - and gave a really nice performance (even though she didn't win). The adjudicator said it was "very accurate" but she "needs to believe in herself more" - which is, itself, very accurate.

At the end of the evening, his music teacher also presented Sean with his Grade 8 certificate, which he won a few weeks back. So Sean has finished off his school career - which ends in about two weeks, when he breaks up in time for the start of his GCSEs - in perfect style.

Sharp Focus

They had hits in the 1970s with the excellent Sylvia and House of the King, which is pretty much all I knew about them before I went. Brian had seen them before, but nothing anybody could have said could have prepared me for the leader of the group, Thijs van Leer, who is a real character. He formed the group in 1969 with guitarist Jan Akkerman, who has since left, to be replaced by the amazingly talented but unassuming Niels van der Steenhoven.

Despite looking like the irritating TV horseracing pundit, John McCririck, van Leer was an excellent showman with his eccentric style of dress and especially his unique 'singing' which is almost impossible to describe but comes somewhere between yodelling at half-cock, Gregorian chanting, George Melly-style burbling and squawking. This is surprisingly good to listen to and helps to produce Focus's distinctive sound, along with the Hammond organ and flute that van Leer also plays - sometimes simultaneously!

The rest of the band is bassist Bobby Jacobs, who is actually van Leer's stepson, and drummer Pierre van der Linden who plays the part of progressive rock drummer perfectly, right down to the over-long drum solo. Also in keeping with progressive rock, some of the songs go on too long and they get to sound too similar after a while. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't thoroughly impressed and keen to get hold of some CDs so I can listen to more of them - and I'll definitely be there, the next time they come to town.

Never the Twain

One of the authors I've always regretted not reading was Mark Twain - mainly because his quotations are always cropping up and there is much more to him than his stories. Only the other day, somebody quoted him on the radio when talking about the mortgage 'crisis' (he said, "Buy land. They're not making it anymore.") So, when his name came up on a blog-cum-writers' forum that I visit regularly (organised by an American friend, Belinda, and called Wordella Writes), I decided it was time to read some Mark Twain, once and for all. His two best-known works also happened to be the only two of his in the bookshop, so I bought them both, starting with reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Mark Twain says himself that he intended the book to work on more than one level (as the best arts always do). He said, "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves." So, although Tom Sawyer is a children's book, for sure, being about haunted houses, pirates and buried treasure, it's also true that it's about childhood.

Tom's adventures always involve some kind of superstition, and the book is a kind of study of childhood fantasies and imagination. They certainly reminded me of some of the ridiculous beliefs we had as children - except Tom is much more superstitious than modern kids. It's significant that all the mumbo-jumbo is acted out against a background of a pious mid-19th century American community (he wrote it in 1876 but set it in the 1830s), where religion and superstition were virtually the same thing (maybe they still are).

Another aspect is the characters' terrible prejudices against 'niggers' and 'injuns'. Twain doesn't make much comment about this, except to record it, which is surprising as he was very enlightened and liberal for his time, including being vehemently anti-racist, mistrustful of organised religion, a vegetarian and generally left wing. I'm sure he would have been fascinated by the way right-wing views and Christianity go hand-in-hand today, and the parallel between the God-fearing but prejudiced characters in his book and today's Christian fundamentalilsts in America.

So, even though it's predominantly a children's book, there is plenty of interest - not least in the fact that it is beautifully written. The beauty is mostly in the simplicity, the best example being the long first paragraph of Chapter 12, which is all about Tom's Aunt Polly's passion for quack medicines, and perfectly describes her fascination with them, but could equally be a description of the health, food and diet fads that some people live by today. I read that paragraph three times before continuing, because there isn't a single word or comma out of place.

Next up is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is reckoned to be even better.

Band on a run

We went through about 15 songs from our repertoire, several times getting them right first time. Such has been our progress that the practices will soon be more accurately described as rehearsals - especially as we have drawn up set lists for two halves of a show, with each half featuring 12 songs.

It's amazing how quickly your drumming improves from playing with live people instead of CDs and backing tracks, and I'm feeling much more confident about the massive challenge of playing in front of a live audience. The plan is still to invite friends and family to a kind of dress rehearsal, before we officially go on the road, and this should now happen within weeks rather than months.

Scary.

Latest news from the Transplant Family

My second eldest brother, Maurice, successfully negotiated a bone marrow transplant, 18 months ago, to conquer leukaemia, and now my eldest brother, Ron, is up for a heart transplant. He's at Papworth Hospital, where he will now stay until a suitable donor heart becomes available.

Papworth is probably the world authority on heart transplants and boasts an amazing success rate in the short term and the long term, so there's a strong chance that his struggle to get fit will be won shortly.

Chickened out

Despite talk of a significant change in shopping habits, however, it is proving difficult to put this policy into action as the supermarkets aren't responding. When it was built a few years ago, the Swindon Asha-Walmart was the second biggest supermarket in the country, but today this vast shop wasn't able to offer us the opportunity of buying any free range chicken breast at all, although the other stuff was piled high. So, for a change, we chose beef instead, for our weekly curry. I'm not sure what sort of life the cow had, but it will certainly have been better than the chickens on the shelves.

Considering we give them a vast sum of money every week to add to their already gigantic profits, I wonder whether an angry letter to Asda would be worth the bother...

The ayes have it

The much-dreaded follow-up appointment after my latest bout of laser treatment, two weeks ago, was all over after about three minutes with the consultant - but not before a nasty moment when she said: "Goodness, you've got multiple tears there, haven't you?" For one dreadful paranoid second, I thought she had found some new ones - until she made it clear that she was talking about the four old ones that had been repaired by the laser. She obviously didn't realise that when it comes to medical matters, us Carters don't do things by halves.

So, after a month of being one short and unpredictable step from the disaster of a detached retina, I'm now back to normal. Except I'm even more massively impressed by the state of medical science than I was before. We are so lucky to live in an age when medical science has come on in leaps and bounds. Sometimes it seems that it can't possibly be as good as we hope it is, but it often ends up being even more amazing than we imagined.

Eye levels

Since the last hospital trip, I've been wishing that a torn retina was a painful condition rather than something that it's impossible to feel. That way, I would know that it was getting better when the pain stopped. As it is, it seems to be going OK, but I thought that last time, and while you wait for the next appointment, you get a kind of paranoia, looking for the telltale signs that it's not healing or even getting worse.

The last thing you want to see is "a curtain going across your eye" (as the doctor described it) which is the extreme case of a detached retina. Flashing lights are a bad sign too, so I'm constantly on the lookout for them. But flares and random reflections are part and parcel of wearing contact lenses, especially at night, and it's easy to convince yourself that an everyday light is an ominious flashing precursor of more trouble.

Another drawback is there is no outward sign of trouble. My eyes look exactly the same in the mirror as they always have. The only clue I have to what's going on inside is that the 'floaters' I have been seeing for nearly a month now have faded, and the thousand tiny dots are about 250 faded ones. So maybe that's a better sign.

My favourite 'Nazi'

Guderian is interesting for being the only general who dared to argue with Hitler about military strategy - even though you didn't need to be a military genius like Guderian to see how disastrous Hitler's deranged ideas about strategy were proving.

Guderian effectively invented blitzkrieg, which has nothing to do with the Blitz but is the word used to describe the fighting method of German Panzer units - which Guderian masterminded. Basically, rather than two armies fighting by forming long lines, opposite each other, as they did for hundreds of years, Guderian came up with the idea of having fast and mobile mini armies which would punch a narrow gap in the enemy's lines, pour through and then cause mayhem from behind. This was exactly the opposite to the tactics he had seen in the First World War, and to achieve it he developed tank warfare and advanced communications.

The book, by Kenneth Macksey, is a difficult read because it's quite technical, but also because the author is obviously a military man and it's always military men who write books about other military men, not realising that the rest of the world don't think in the same terms. So, while he's busy telling us about armaments and training and things, the crucial questions about how much Guderian knew about the Holocaust or what he thought about the Germans' inhuman treatment of conquered Russians, are dismissed in a couple of sentences. Although it's clear that Guderian was never a Nazi, the reader is left to make up his own mind about what sort of person Guderian really was, from snippets from his memoirs, because the author talks about almost everything in military terms.

I've always been fascinated by the paradoxical concept of honourable Germans in the war, and one of the good things about the book is its explanation of the relationship between the German army and the Nazis, who were uncomfortable bedfellows (unlike the Luftwaffe and the Nazis). You couldn't help thinking that Guderian, who faced no charges for war crimes after he fell into the hands of the Americans, ended up a victim of the regime, like most army men end up being used by politicians in the end (they never learn).

The irony is that Guderian would have been a huge national hero if he had been British. He was honourable in the way he tried, in vain, to minimise German casualties at the end of the war - mainly because he always felt a duty to his men. He was certainly very charismatic and a brilliant thinker, so a few times, while reading the book, I had the awkward feeling of wishing success on him, as the hero of the book, until I remembered he was, for instance, heading towards Dunkirk or on the brink of victory in Russia, which would have been the most catastrophic event in world history.

The book also corrected some misnomers I had about the war in 1939/40. The Poles famously sent cavalry to meet the Panzers, but their defence of the country was very stubborn, determined and heroic, despite the odds against them. And the French, who I had always believed were overrun without much opposition, may actually have come out as winners if their leaders hadn't dithered at crucial moments.

Best of all, the book paints a useful picture of Germany between the wars, giving the reader a better understanding of why Hitler was able to seize power and keep it.

I'm now looking around for a book on Benjamin Franklin - because Al Stewart didn't just write a line about him, but a whole song...

Eye Saga - The Sequel

Thirteen days after my torn retina experience, what I assumed was going to be a routine visit to the hospital to be given the all-clear turned into an unexpected, unwelcome sequel - but thankfully with a good chance of a happy ending.

I arrived for my 3.30pm appointment about half an hour early, and enjoyed 20 minutes of reading my book before I was called in to have the drops to make my pupil dilated. That put paid to my reading - it's impossible with one contact lens in and the other out - and it was another 45 minutes before I finally got my turn to see the consultant (a different one to the one I had seen before), by which time Julie had arrived to drive me home.

The consultant went through the same drill of looking at my eye very closely with his machine and then finally sat back - only to hit me with the news that I needed more laser treatment. Gulp. And before I had time to get used to this bad news, he hit me with the triple whammy that I have THREE more tears in my retina (tears as in things that are torn, not drops of liquid that come out when you cry).

Well, that was more than enough to send my little brain into overdrive. I immediately started to see blackness, and within two seconds it was as if a black shutter had been pulled up on my world, from bottom to top. I managed to say "I'm feeling really faint" and grip the table before I lapsed into a weird dream. Rather than continue at the same pace as real life, however, this dream was going at 1000mph. The next thing I know I am kneeling on the floor, staring at the caster of a trolley, and completely and utterly confused - like when you sometimes wake up and don't know where you are or how long you've been there, only this lasted for four or five seconds. I was desperately trying to make sense of it all, but that seemed to require so much effort that I was worried that if I suddenly jumped back into the real world my eyes would pop out or it would take my breath away or something. The only grip I had on reality was actually a grip on the consultant's leg. I was holding his calf, and actually recognised it as somebody's leg, and even vaguely knew it was the consultant's. Slowly, I began to understand that I had fainted, and the nurse got me to lie on the floor.

It was the first time in my life that I had fainted, and it shocked me because I had always assumed that fainting would be a fairly neutral experience. But I found it really distressing and scary.

I had obviously fainted in the chair and must have started to topple over, so the consultant grabbed me and lowered me to the floor. "You were away with the fairies for a moment there," he said later. So, now I'm on the floor with my feet on a chair and going through the feeling stupid phase, but now the anxiety is back as I realise that I'm in for another laser session. But it's not the laser that's the worry because I've had that before and I know it's only mildly stressful. The real problem is not knowing where all this is going to end and knowing that the consequences of a torn retina that's out of control are very serious - and all this has been multiplied by ten because I had made up my mind that today's appointment was only a formality, so was completely unprepared for it. I hadn't even eaten before I went, which didn't help.

So now I had to face about an hour of anxiety, mostly in the canteen where we had been dispatched, to get some food and drink. This was an hour longer than I really wanted to have to think about it, but the consultant wanted to see the other people in his clinic before concentrating on me. Part of my anxiety over the treatment was because of the laser, but now I had the added problem of avoiding fainting, which wasn't going to be straightforward because you have to be sat up for the laser and I had already proved it was possible to faint while sat down.

I actually felt better once the treatment started. It was the anticipation that was the problem. The laser was, of couse, no worse than before, but lasted longer this time - at least half as much again. At the end, the nurse checked the number of blasts of the laser I had had, and it was 519. I could have guessed this as one of the ways I devised to keep my mind from racing was to count each flash as they arrived in batches (I think the most was 33). The second worst part of the treatment was having to break off when it was nearly complete, so the consultant could take another look through another machine in another room, before resuming. Even worse was right at the end, when he donned a headset - a bit like those virtual reality helmets - to get a really good look in the corner of my eye. To do this he had to hold my eye open (with the blunt end of a paperclip, he said, although I'm not sure if he meant it literally). This lasted about a minute and a half, and by the end of that I was really squirming because I was desperate to blink.

I then enjoyed the relief of knowing the ordeal was over again, and this was made much better with some news that was more reassuring. The consultant said he thought it was now under control and there was no reason to think that I would get more tears (as in things that are torn), although he obviously couldn't guarantee it. As if to underline the fact that he wasn't concerned, he said there would be no need for me to come back for another fortnight, unless there was any change, and he even said I could go back to normal life, "as long as you don't do bungee-jumping". I asked if I could play tennis and he said yes*, but only after hesitating and thinking about it, so I'm taking that as: "Don't push your luck." However, he had no hesitation about drumming, so at least I can do that.

The first episode, nearly two weeks ago, turned out to be an interesting experience and a fascinating curiosity, which even became a bit of a conversation piece, so it wasn't so bad. But after today's palaver, I've decided that I've now had enough, and I'd really like it to stop now.

*Of course, this should go something like:
Patient: "Doctor, will I be able to play tennis after the operation?"
Doctor: "Yes."
Patient: "That's good, because I couldn't play before."

Hot stuff

Holly's geography homework over the weekend was to make a model of a volcano, which seemed a pretty tall order to us. She spent hours making it out of papier-mache, and we inevitably got involved. And as she was on a deadline, three of us were furiously painting and drying it with the hair dryer tonight, to get it finished on time.

The result - a two-part model that opens up to reveal the inner workings of a volcano - was pretty impressive, we think (though the photos don't really do it justice). It was a bit of a family effort, but mostly Holly's hard work, which was summed up when she said she wished it was for art homework, not geography.

Rock on

Sean goes to Rock School for two hours every Tuesday evening - a kind of club for schoolchildren to go to, to learn the fine art of being in a rock band. They are taught by professional teachers and get access to all the equipment they need.

Then, at the end of term, they put on a concert - mostly for their parents. This time it was at the brand new Isambard School in Swindon. Some parents only go along to watch their little Johnnys and then go home, but we decided to do the decent thing and watch nearly all of the 12 bands.

This was mostly a pleasure as they were all competent and some were very good and creative, although there were a couple who went in for hard core metal, including Sean's band (pictured). I'd be lying if I said I liked their style - Sean said we wouldn't - but they were technically good and Sean looked suitably assured as the drummer.

It's a shame that they don't realise the very narrow appeal of metal music, but the good news is that when playing it they get to learn the trade, so have the necessary skills to change over to more conventional music when they get older and wiser.

The whole Rock School thing, obviously, can only be good, and it's only one part of a general trend of encouraging children to take up music in this country, which is going to reap big rewards for us all, one day.

He's done it!

It's been a bit like somebody has been doing a drum roll in our ears since he sat the exam on March 11, and the tension rose to fever pitch when our drum teacher, Paul Ashman, phoned us at teatime with the news that the results were in - and we were out. And when we phoned back, he wasn't in, so we had to endure a few more nervous minutes while we located him.

My immediate reaction to the news was "Thank God for that!" and this was quickly followed by "You sound like you're going to cry, Julie" ("That's because I am").

We really did feel elated and proud that Sean has achieved Grade 8, especially because he completed it before leaving school, which has always been his self-inflicted target (we believe he is the first of Paul's pupils and the first Kingsdown pupil to achieve this). But, more than anything, we felt relief because this was a re-take, after he originally took it on December 13. We were all stunned that he failed by three marks that time, especially as he'd thought it had gone well, and the three top-rate drum teachers whom he independently performed the same pieces to - in one case over a long period - all said they couldn't find much wrong with his playing.

Of course, everybody has experience of not agreeing with the examiner's marking at least once in their life, but in this case we really felt as though Sean had been hard done by. There were factors like the examiner being assessed himself, on the day of the exam, which must have skewed the marks, and other things that seemed to conspire against him. So, even when, after the re-take, Sean said he was 98 per cent sure he'd passed and Paul said he was 99 per cent sure, we had our worries. It would have been a gross injustice if he hadn't passed, especially in the light of the hard work he has put into his drumming - not just for this exam, but during the whole six or seven years he's been doing it. We were even relieved for our teacher, Paul, who has always shown faith in Sean, has done a lot to get him this far and had been as shocked by the episode of the first exam as we were.

Failure would have been especially difficult to swallow today, after Sean stood in for me at our band's practice. Because I'm still under doctor's orders not to do any drumming (hopefully until I get the all-clear next Friday), I asked him to step in at short notice, which meant playing songs that he was either unfamiliar with or even hadn't ever heard before. So he had to switch to playing the kind of old-fogey music we do, and he also had to overcome the temptation to play fancy bits that he's capable of, which are not our (my) style. The fact that he rose to the challenge and worked patiently and hard for three hours was more than enough to prove to me that he has a greater feel for drumming than any exam paper could measure.

Grade 8, in fact, is the highest grade that musicians can reach in part-time studies. Anything higher - and there are all kinds of diplomas - requires college courses or independent study. More significantly, it's a grade that you don't get to, just by doing it for a long time. I, for instance, wouldn't attain it if I played drums for the next 500 years, although I do know more than enough about drumming to understand and appreciate the complexity and difficulty of Grade 8 pieces. As I always say, drumming looks easy until you try it, and the better the really talented players get, the easier they make it look.

We've never been anything but massively proud of Sean's achievements as a drummer, so today was never going to change our feelings about that, regardless of the verdict. But the certificate he will shortly be getting serves two purposes. It's for Sean to use as proof of how good he is, and it's for us. The world is full of doting parents who think their children have special talents - they wouldn't be very good parents if they didn't - but we finally have a certificate that we can put on the wall to prove that Sean's drumming abilities aren't just something that only we see through our rose-coloured spectacles.

Band of hope

And it got better in the evening. For a while I've been coming to the conclusion that my drumming education, so far, has been missing something. I've worked out that since I took it up, five or six years ago, I've only really watched good drummers - Sean, Paul (our teacher), other drum teachers, the top-rated drummers on 'drum clinics' we've attended or on DVD and videos or in concerts, etc. Although this is inspiring in one way, in each case, my feeling has always been "I could never do that." So I'm determined to get out and see some more amateur drummers, in the hope that I will be able to say "I can do that". I really need to see some average drummers!

With this in mind, and also because we really should see what the 'opposition' is up to, I arranged with Dave, one of our guitarists, to go out tonight and see a band perform in a pub. They turned out to have a good, tight sound, but we soon realised that all their songs sounded the same, which made us realise just how varied and interesting our repertoire already is. I obviously spent most of the time watching the drummer, who could play really fast - he had no choice because all the songs were at the same fast tempo - but I could see weaknesses, especially the fact that he played the cymbals far too much. Just the fact that I can find some fault in somebody else's drumming and see how they could improve is a big confidence booster.

Kingdom come

He's a life-size cardboard cut-out which I liberated from work today. He'd been gathering dust in the newsroom for more than a year, having been some kind of leaflet-dispensing display during the Brunel 200 celebrations. Then, this week, he got moved as part of a clean-up campaign (although it's obvious to me that newsrooms are meant to be untidy and should be left that way).

I have to admit that I've had my eye on him for ages, so when he ended up in the library and the librarian said she didn't want him because he gave her the creeps, I pounced.

It was only a matter of time before he ended up in the skip, so I decided to take him home. At the moment he gets pride of place in the lounge (where he was pictured with Elvis) but will eventually end up in my office in the loft, I expect.

Brunel, of course, is not just a national hero but a local one too, having been the man who put Swindon on the map in the 1840s, when he decided to build his works here for his Great Western Railway. So it would have been criminal not to give him a good home, even though some people would have put him straight on eBay.

Back to school

I really thought it would be about taking notes and using nothing more sophisticated than a highlighter pen - because that's how I did it. But it soon became clear that there is much more to it than that. The idea was to take a more scientific approach, so we heard about studies in efficient revision methods, optimum times for studying and all kinds of things that we'd never really considered. For instance, it's much better to do more stimulating things in the afternoons, when we are naturally less receptive to working and learning, and this included going on to YouTube where there are lots of homemade study videos that often relate directly to the syllabus.

It was also pointed out that by far the best way to learn something thoroughly is to try to teach it to somebody else. This can help you absorb nearly 20 times as much as just listening to a teacher, and you can combine it with other efficient methods, such as discussion groups. I had spent most of the day helping kids at Ruskin to put together their school newspaper (the Ruskin Express), and I'm never quite sure why I do it, but I now see that I get to learn more about my job when I do (nine-year-olds sometimes have a habit of asking some very pertinent questions).

So it was pretty enlightening, but even more revealing was the fact that although there are 252 kids in Sean's year and the exams are now looming large, and although the school obviously went to a lot of trouble to organise the evening, only about 40 kids and their parents bothered to turn up - just one in six. We both found it incredible that most people would pass up a chance to give their kids a better chance, especially as we came away thinking Sean now had a significant advantage over his peers, just because of one hour-and-a-half session. We were feeling pretty sorry for the other kids who could put in a lot of effort and not really achieve their objective.

We still have contrasting approaches to the whole exam thing. Julie can still vividly recall the panic that set in when she sat her exams, so can't help worrying about Sean's, whereas I take the viewpoint that as long as he passes English and Maths and does well in Music, which is his strongest subject, GCSEs should have a relatively small impact on his life, compared with other milestones, especially A Levels. In other words, not getting too het up about it all is probably as valuable as any of the other useful things we learned tonight.

Eye, eye

On Tuesday evening (ie four days ago) I could see a few spots at the corner of my eye while playing tennis. This didn't worry me at all as I had also seen spots a few weeks ago, and they had cleared up after about 24 hours. I've been burning the candle at both ends this week, as I was when the spots appeared before, so I put it down to tiredness. This was still my verdict when, while walking to work on Wednesday, I began to see much more than spots, right in front of my left eye.

It was uncannily like a piece of dark red cotton (I could only assume it was red, being colourblind) which was frayed at one end and flapped about, exactly like cotton would, when I moved my eyes. It was permanently in front of me, although after a while of not concentrating on it and as the day wore on, it seemed to fade. In the evenings, going from a light room into the dark, I also saw a very narrow band of white light, right on the very left edge of my field of vision. But there was absolutely no pain or any other sensation involved, apart from the fact that I could see this piece of cotton clearly.

After a hard working week with late evenings and early mornings, it was still there on Friday evening when I had an Indian head massage. I hoped the massage would help to cure it but it made no difference, and after mentioning it to Christine, who does the massage, she insisted on looking up the symptoms in one of those family health books. I have to say I don't really believe in those books because you can convince yourself that you've got every illness under the sun after reading them (I reckon they could convince me I'm pregnant). However, the possibilities the book came up with were pretty frightening and I therefore decided I'd go to the doctor's in the morning, unless I woke up after a good night's sleep to find the cotton had gone. I was still clinging to the hope that it was just tiredness.

Well, it was still there this morning, and after two hours' wait at the walk-in centre - Easter Saturday is not a good time to get ill - the nurse there phoned the hospital, spoke to the eye doctor and arranged for me to go up to the hospital treatment centre within a couple of hours. This gave me time to come home and load the drums in the car, ready for band practice that was planned for this afternoon - which I never got to.

The first news from the hospital was that I wouldn't be able to drive home because they were going to dilate my pupils with drops, so I had to arrange for Brian (my brother) to drive me home, and I'd also forgotten to take a pot to put my contact lenses in, which caused more inconvenience. Then the 15-minute wait (with my eyes closed) for my pupils to dilate wasn't long enough and I had to have a second dose and another 15-minute wait with my eyes closed, by which time I was starting to feel more anxious about what the outcome of it all was going to be.

Eventually, after five minutes of the doctor - an extremely nice man called Mr Chaudhuri - staring into my eyes through a machine, he sat back and told me I had a torn retina, which he had no doubt expected to find all along. I said something stupid like "That sounds bad," to which he replied, "Well, it's not good. You are going to need laser treatment. Shall we do it now?"

At this point I need to explain that when it comes to anything vaguely surgical, I'm not exactly what you would call brave, so I had to explain my cowardice to the doctor, hoping he would offer some kind of sedative or something. But all he offered was an assurance that I wouldn't feel anything. This isn't much help because it's never the pain that worries me, just that my imagination always runs riot whenever faced with any situation like that.

"Well, you don't really have an option," said the doctor. "If it's not treated, it will inevitably lead to a detached retina, which leads to blindness." So, thankfully before I had much time to think about it, we had both transferred to the main part of the hospital, where he had to open up the laser room (this now being Saturday afternoon). By this time I was thankful for the fact that my contact lenses were still out because I couldn't see the instrument of torture properly, and as I also told him not to give me any running commentaries, I was fairly blissfully ignorant of what was about to happen.

I had to rest my chin on a little block in front of a small machine and push my forehead against a band, exactly as you do when you're having your eyes examined at the optician's (the machine looked virtually the same, as far as I could tell). First the doctor put some local anaesthetic in my eye, then some kind of lens which held it open and was somehow attached to the machine (I didn't actually get to see this device, whatever it was). Then he spent what seemed like ages but must have been only a couple of minutes, looking at my eyes with a bright light, presumably homing in on the target. I was hoping that somehow this bright light was the laser already working, but then he said he was about to turn on the laser and told me to keep my eyes fixed on a point to the extreme left. So I gripped the handlebars of the machine tighter.

When the laser was turned on, I saw (probably) orange lights which flashed on and off quickly, while making a clicking noise. You get about 20 or 30 of these flashes at a time. Then there is a gap of a few seconds while the doctor does some re-positioning, before you get another dose of laser flashes. You get about 10 or 12 doses in the end, which started slightly uncomfortable but was painful a couple of times - similar to the kind of headache you get that seems to be at the back of your eyes. He turned the power down slightly when I winced, but it still stung a bit. All the time I was getting more and more anxious and gripping the bars of the machine ever more tightly, and my mouth went bone dry.

I was desperately trying to concentrate on keeping my eye and my head still, which is a real effort when your instincts are to look away and back away. Finally, the doctor leaned back and said it was finished - the whole thing having taken about ten minutes. It was only then, as the relief swept over me, that I felt a hot flush coming over me and I felt like I might faint (I often feel like this during any kind of treatment, but haven't fainted yet). Once the device on my eye was taken out, I could see, though everything was red and it was still out of focus because my contact lenses were out. Within a couple of minutes, the redness was gone.

The doctor explained that the laser burns "a circle of fire" on to the retina, and this scar tissue prevents the tear getting any bigger. If left, the tear would continue to grow until the retina becomes detached - and then you're talking about surgery to save the sight of your eye, if you're lucky. This detachment can occur within days, so I had a lucky escape and can spend the rest of my life telling people to go straight to the hospital if they ever see things in front of their eyes that shouldn't be there (although little dots are normal and harmless). Certainly, if you see bits of cotton, don't delay.

I've been ordered not to do anything strenuous until they see me again in two weeks' time, which means no long walks, no sport and not even drumming. Even driving is out. As long as I don't do anything that causes my head to shake about, it's OK and I should make a full recovery. I was even able to put my contact lenses straight back in again afterwards.

I asked the doctor what I'd done for this to happen and he said nothing. The two main causes are short-sightedness - and I'm very short-sighted - and what he called 'anno domini'. I picked up some leaflets on the way out which pointed out that a tear in the retina is rare - affecting only one in 10,000 people and then mostly short-sighted, middle aged people like me and Mr Magoo. The leaflet also provided the diagram, below, which demonstrates - thankfully not too graphically - both what I have and what it would have developed into. It's thanks to Christine that I went to the doctor's when I did, and although I probably would have gone on Monday, that may have been too late to avert a disaster.

The red cotton should start to fade and disappear over the next two or three weeks, as if it were a bruise, which it is, sort of. It's blood, floating around in the vitreous (jelly-like) stuff that fills your eyeball, which the retina encases.

So I'm feeling pretty relieved about the whole thing, as well as impressed by the technology and the care I got, and also pretty smug to have been proved right, so quickly, after what I said in my previous post to this blog, which I now cut and paste: The NHS is still this country's greatest peacetime achievement by a very, very long way, and long may it continue to be in safe hands.

One year on

I will never forget the first thing I said to her when she got home from school and I had to break the news the doctor had given me on the phone - I told her it was not a disaster but it was a challenge.

Well, 366 days and well over a thousand injections later, I can report that Holly - and me and Julie too, come to think of it - have risen to the challenge. We are now so up on the diabetic thing that even the current complications caused by Holly being 13 and going through all the changes that 13-year-old girls do, which can cause havoc with blood sugar levels, is but a minor obstacle for us to negotiate. Actually, we had cause to phone the diabetic nurse today, to check on doses, and she advised exactly what we all predicted she would.

This was the first time in months that we needed to contact the nurse. Even more ironically, and as if to underline, still further, Holly's achievement in mastering the art of being a diabetic, a work colleague today suffered a hypo that eventually led to a paramedic being called. A hypo, for anybody who doesn't know, is what happens when you have too much insulin, and is usually and easily corrected by eating three Lucozade tablets. But if the person doesn't get some kind of sugar/glucose, they eventually get to the point where they do an extremely good impression of being drunk and refuse to co-operate, even with pleas to eat or drink something sugary. In fact, calling out a paramedic was way too drastic but necessary because of some health and safety nonsense that prevented even the first aider from administering a very simple remedy (you don't really need to call for medical support for a diabetic having a hypo, unless the person is unconscious).

The point I'm getting to is that Holly has never been anywhere near this state, always being in full control of the situation. As Julie said tonight, when you first find out, you can't dream that you'll ever get used to it or that it won't completely dominate your own life, let alone Holly's. But you do.

Holly has well and truly cracked it, which makes us proud of her every day - and that's still only half the story, because what she/we also have is a philosophy of always respecting diabetes for the dangerous condition it is if not kept in check. In other words, we didn't get where we are today by being complacent.

The only thing that impresses us half as much as Holly's fantastic response to diabetes is the National Health Service's faultless - and I use the word literally - care for Holly so far. The NHS is still this country's greatest peacetime achievement by a very, very long way, and long may it continue to be in safe hands.