Thanks for all the good wishes and helpful comments, much appreciated. If I’d known I was going to last this long I might have chanced my arm just a bit and been more daring on occasion.

Good news, after yet more poking and prodding and twisting of the neck and back, the Royal London Hospital gave me the full discharge last week so no more trips to the metropolis to get felt up.

As a very young boy I had envied the doctor who lived a few streets away, more like a world away from our humble abode in Liverpool 13, who had a brass plate with his name on it in his front garden. One day, I thought, one day, I want one of those. How fab would that be!

Well, now I have three of ‘em that I can’t even see. Mind you, they are going nowhere with 19 screws to keep them in. That’s more than that bird man had in Alcatraz.
Thanks again.