Winifred's spoons.

I made a cup of tea and got a spoon out of the drawer to stir. It's one of Winifred's spoons.

Winifred was a parishioner of mine back in the 70s. She was a lovely old lady, well over 80, with a mind like a razor and the confidence to speak it. She liked to see new things being done, new ideas tried out. She was mentally much younger and more flexible than people 30 or 40 years her junior. We got on very well. Every week on Friday I took Holy Communion to her at home because she was too frail to get to church. I took the Book of Common Prayer (1662) along first time, as I would for all the older parishioners. Winifred insisted on the New Service (what soon became the 1980 Alternative Service Book). None of that old-fashioned claptrap for her! Enough. I loved Winifred dearly.

Early one Saturday morning Winifred's landlady phoned. Winifred was not responding and she was afraid she had died in the night. Would I please go round at once. I did, and indeed Winifred was dead in her bed. I gave her the last rites and the necessary formalities began.

The Vicar took her funeral in the parish church, with me assisting. I thought he got that wrong. Winifred and I were close, and she would have wanted me to do it. But maybe I could not have held back the tears.

In his address the vicar said that I had taken Winifred the sacrament the day before she died, so she had died in a state of grace. I thought "What? Is the God we believe in such a being as would penalise a fabulous (and deeply Christian in the best sense) old lady if I had not celebrated Holy Communion with her in her final hours? Is he the kind of being who would punish her if between receiving the bread and wine from me and her death she had entertained some wicked thought? If so, I'm out of here."

Within two years I had left the employ of the Church of England, although it took the death of another close friend before I finally walked away mentally, emotionally and publicly, from Christian belief.

Winifred's landlady gave me her cutlery. I still have her spoons and use them almost daily in the hope that some of Winifred's valiant freshness of mind might yet rub off on me.

False and real memories

I'm very interested in the phenomenon of false memories. At a trivial level I have a strong memory about the bridge event last night... but for various reasons I know it can't be correct, so I settle for being confused about it.

At the most serious end of the spectrum I have lived with someone who had memories of childhood abuse. No-one can say for sure whether those memories are true or false. The tendency is to believe the accuser, but observing the situation from close hand, I am genuinely perplexed. It is a very difficult situation. And so much hangs on it - someone's mental health, someone's freedom or imprisonment. Not having a memory one is certain of believed has in the past been so distressing it has led to suicide. But certainty is not a guarantee of accuracy - as I know from my own experience.

For example, and again at a trivial level, as often happens to people of my age my memory for names has become unreliable. I forget the names of people I know quite well and see often. And when I do that, I also have a certainty that the forgotten name begins with a particular letter. I've spent a lot of time trying to recall someone's name which I am absolutely certain begins with S, and when I finally get the name, say by asking the person, I find it begins with another letter entirely. I works for places too. I want to tell someone about that place up the M1 I visited recently... but I can't remember the name. I know it begins with N - Nottingham, Northampton, Newark, Nuneaton... no none of those. Ah, now I remember; Sheffield. This happens so often I have learned that it is as good as certain that my certainty is wrong, and the name as good as definitely begins with a letter other than the one I am certain it begins with!

In criminal cases the evidence of eye witnesses is usually taken as decisive. But researchers into memory are well aware that our memories are much less than reliable. People have been convicted on eye witness testimony: the witness is certain of what he saw, the jury convicts. But at appeal some other evidence comes along, something incontrovertible such as DNA, and the conviction has to be overturned. The witness's memory, of which they were certain enough to put someone's freedom in jeopardy, proves to be wrong.

There is a report in The Guardian today about some research that has been done with mice. Technology is such that the researchers were able to plant a false memory in the brains of mice and observe its effects. This is just the first step. It may help us to understand human memory better some time in the future, or it may help someone to manipulate our memory to our disadvantage. But at least it is a step towards greater awareness of the unreliability of memory. I suspect that the greater the certainty the greater the chance that memory is wrong. We'll see. But I tend to think that anything that reduces our cocksureness of being right all the time is going to be a good thing.

Functions of religion

I spotted this on Twitter this morning, retweeted by my friend Mike Hitchcock:

"Religion is man’s quest for assurance that he won’t be dead when he will be."

I like that.  From my funeral experience as well as from my study of religion, that seems to me to be the case, although not the whole case. The desire for reassurance that death is not the end is very strong, even in non-believers. Another factor, which also applies to magic, is the quest for control over nature, such as through praying for rain. Both of those primitive desires or needs are very understandable.

Another primitive desire behind religion is the quest to understand, for example "where did all this come from?" Religions are loaded with attempts to answer that kind of question. And why not? For some reason we desire, maybe even need, to know. The only caveat with such a reasonable attempt is the necessity of the ability to move on when the answers given prove to be inadequate.

Nowadays, and for a very long time, religion has at least two other functions. First it bestows political power on its leaders and underwrites the power of the secular rulers, who always seem to be in cahoots with some kind of religious belief. Second, it provides reassurance that what you are comfortable with will not change.

The first of these keeps people ignorant and subservient and must be challenged. The second tells them everything is alright when it isn't and so hinders human growth and responsibility. So that too needs to be confronted.

Religious belief

I am as horrified by the events in Bangladesh in the news today as everyone else. Believers in anything calling for those who do not share their beliefs to be hanged is about as ghastly a thing as can be imagined, except that their wish should become reality.

But it is a sign or symptom of what I am for ever banging on about. Religion is not an intellectual commitment, it is an emotional one, held in the guts, and therefore the irrational motor of extreme feelings and actions.

Just consider a few examples of very clever people justifying their religious commitment with serious argument. The one I know most about is Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and intellectual giant of his time. In his writings you can find clearly set out his struggle with himself and his attempt to justify and develop doctrine through philosophy. His influence is still being felt today. But deeply as Augustine's thought ran, it's hard to see him other than as a man who felt, and felt deeply, first, and thought after.

I know very little about the Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon, or the Arab philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. In fact, only what I've learned from Peter Adamson's podcasts. But it seems to me that both these learned and intelligent men were reasoning from within an established philosophical background in order to support their religious beliefs. It would be possible to make the same argument about many others, including such greats as Thomas Aquinas, right down to the present day.

As a theological student I was taught by a lady for whom I had the greatest respect and affection. She was unremittingly rigorous in following hard questions where ever they led. If I owe my move into atheism to anyone, it's her. But even she started from her religious conviction and argued in support of it, sometimes very radically. So much so she was on the fringe of being called, with al-Rāzī, "The Heretic".

If this is the case even for the most subtle thinkers how can it be less so for the rest of us? Without the intellectual capacity of philosophers, most believers don't actually reflect critically on their faith to any significant extent. This may be a sweeping generalisation, but my experience as a clergyman convinced me that there are some who are prepared to think hard, and to shift their position within the faith when forced by the line their thinking travels. There are some who find thinking about religious issues threatening, and who may join a Lent course once every few years, but largely they don't want to think in a way that challenges belief, they want to be confirmed and comforted. And there are the rest who don't think critically about their faith at all. For them, faith is a given, a fundamental emotional commitment. And when it is attacked, or perceived to be attacked, it is an emotional, sometimes violent, response that is provoked.

It seems to me that this holds true for every religious person that I have ever discussed the content of belief with. Once, long ago, when my own reflections on religion were beginning, I heard an august member of my local church say that science was no problem for his belief - there was nothing in scientific discovery that he could not reconcile with his faith. Then he paused - I remember clearly (but not necessarily correctly) the room, the time of day, the elder he was talking to: it made such an impression on me. And after the pause he said "If scientists could create life in a test tube, that might be the end of belief for me". I was 14 at the time. I have never met another believer who could say that there might be a rational cause for the end of faith.

Look at me: I had long realised that my beliefs did not stand examination, certainly not the kind of rigorous critical questioning that my doctrine teacher had encouraged. I recognised that all the evidence I knew about was that the Universe was very far from the place religion described. I was convinced by people like Don Cupitt that religion was a human invention. And still, I was a clergyman, taking services, to which I now think I was addicted in some way, for years after reaching that point. It was an emotional experience, the death from cancer of a friend, also a clergyman, who, with only days left to live asked me where I though God was "in all this", that finally killed what I had grown up with and been motivated by all my life.

Criticising the content of belief on rational grounds convinces no-one. Believers are satisfied that much of religion is and will always remain a mystery, and they don't expect to make sense of it. What remains important is criticising the pernicious effects that religion often has, which we see, sadly, all around us.

Immigrants clog the NHS?

It especially annoys me when I read the "Immigrants clog up the NHS" claptrap. Old people in need of expensive, recurring and long term care clog up the NHS - people like me in fact. Immigrants are normally younger, therefore healthy, and make few demands. If you see many Asians in hospital they will usually be older, they'll usually have been here many years, they'll usually have paid their taxes and NI Contributions, and so on.

Being married to an immigrant, I may have an axe to grind, but not a few of my friends are immigrants, and none of them fit the stereotype. My wife certainly doesn't clog up the NHS, despite being in an older age group. She works for it, has suffered stress because of it, and conscientiously does her utmost to provide the best possible service to its customers. She is not alone in that.

Last time I was briefly in hospital, in the cardiac unit, there were no immigrants among the patients, and several among the nurses, all of whom did a great job. When I was on the table the cardiologist giving me the benefit of her expertise was an immigrant, and the consultant in the department is at least of Asian descent, whether he is himself an immigrant or not.

Persecution? WHAT?

Carey, former ABofC, says that UK Christians feel like a persecuted minority. Frankly that makes me sick. The Christian church knows what persecution feels like. It can recall persecution long ago in Ancient Rome, and persecution in more recent times in Stalin's Russia. To call what it now happening, namely a reminder from the secular world of human rights and a rejection of religious privilege and flummery, 'persecution' is a deep insult to those who really suffered for their faith.

It also displays a profound lack of historical perspective which amounts to ignorance. And it displays an arrogance which thinks it has a right to privilege in Government (such as automatic seats in the Upper Chamber and the right to be kow-towed to in certain issues) just because the rest of society thinks it is time to move on from 2000 year old moral prescriptions towards something more authentic and fit for the present day.

Unchanging doctrine?

Round about the year 50CE the church had to get together to resolve an serious argument among its leaders about what counted as it's teaching and what didn't. In the middle ages the pope changed the definition of the terrible sin of usury when he realised that they needed to benefit from capital investments. In 1633 the Roman Catholic church condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth and the planets went round the Sun, which it finally recanted in 1992. For more than 1800 years the church did not blink at slavery, which is accepted throughout the bible, and which it now condemns. In 1930 the Church of England reversed it's position on contraception. When I was a clergyman I was not allowed to remarry divorced people. Since 2002 that changed (grudgingly).

So what is anyone doing saying that the church's doctrines come from God and cannot be changed? Even the central teachings about Jesus himself come from an argument between St Paul and James, Jesus' brother, which Paul happened to win. How can Mr Welby pretend to be holding the line on homosexuality when he must surely realise that history is against him? The same Church of England fought itself to a standstill in my time as a clergyman over the ordination of women, which it now accepts (although still resisted in some quarters), and is doing it again over women bishops.

Is there something that prevents the religious looking at their own history and learning from it?

Homosexuality and the clergy

I have been stimulated to quite a bit of thought by recent events and the fall of Cardinal O'Brien. What follows below in no way purports to describe him. It's written from my own imagination, but also from my long-ago experience as a Church of England clergyman, and I think it contains some truth. I have seen a lot of harsh things written about clergymen who fail in their vocation. Many of those have been written from ignorant and simplistic viewpoints, so I want to stress the other, human, side of a man struggling against himself. Everything below refers to adults - candidates for ordination and older. No excuses are offered here for those who abuse children.


Okay, so you're a gay man, probably deeply in denial, who thinks he has a vocation to the Roman Catholic priesthood. The fact that the Roman clergy are not allowed any sex, let alone gay sex, is part of the attraction because it promises to curb the unwelcome urges you are experiencing, urges you believe to be sinful.

All goes well. At seminary you meet and make friends with other young men and strong bonds are formed. These powerful attractions can be described in terms of clerical fraternity, and their sexual undercurrent can be pushed away and denied.

Ordination means that you're living with other men, or alone. Some of the men you meet are attractive. Some of these attractive young men come to confess that they are having sinful, homosexual, urges and they want your guidance and help. How can you help them when you can't help yourself? But you allow friendships to develop and keep trying to push the sexuality away. It's of the Devil! You teach and preach against it – as much for your own benefit as that of your parishioners.

But the more you push it away the more the pressure grows – and you put your arm round, perhaps embrace, an attractive young man who is then overwhelmed, frightened and disgusted by the powerful sexuality conveyed in your touch.

You withdraw, you beat yourself up emotionally for having given way. Your teaching about sexuality becomes ever more vicious, aimed at yourself and your evil urges which somehow you cannot control. This vocation was supposed to help you defeat the Devil, but in fact it has got worse with the years. As you get older, and more senior, the young men you are brought into contact with by the church get younger and more attractive.

You give way again, and put your hand on one young man's knee, and he recoils in horror. So do you,  revolted by what you've done. Once more you beat yourself up – never, ever, again.

But of course it doesn't stop, and as you get more prominent and more senior, so the fears grow that it might perhaps one day come out. And you hate yourself more for what you've done, for the evil feelings you think you shouldn't have.

And in the end, a complaint, public humiliation and disaster.

Frankly my view is that the church, hung up on sexuality, has done more to wound young gay men and women than almost anyone else. It is no surprise that working with such intense pressures some clergy fail to keep their vows. That doesn't make it right, nor excuse it, but it is at least understandable.

Half asleep thoughts...

At some time during the night I heard a snippet of an item on the BBC World Service. Three people contributed to it, apart from the presenter. Two were immigrants, one was a UK-born commentator. Immigrant 1 had taken a low-paid job in an Internet Cafe, done well and got a glowing reference when he applied for a better, but still lowly, IT job. He had risen into management, his wife was now also in IT, and they had a household income in the £100,000 range. And he pointed out that he and his wife were making their home here and repaying their debt to the country through their taxes.

Immigrant 2 had come to take a labouring job, with the aim of saving enough money to retire to a cottage on the South Coast. Well, that wasn't going to happen, especially as he defined a good day in terms of litres of vodka. He was now homeless.

The UK commentator's only contribution was that Immigrant 1 should not have been given a job that could have gone to a UK National. Half asleep, my only thought was that if he'd take the low-paid first job and had what it takes (talent in IT, industrious attitude, application to become fluent in the language) and no-one else did, then he deserved the success. Immigrant 1 made the point that any UK-born applicant would have had a tremendous advantage - fluent English (well, that's debatable as far as some of the yoofs I have met are concerned) knowledge of The System which he had to learn, and so on. He beat the competition despite these disadvantages, but he could not say why. Maybe he was prepared to work harder. His English now was certainly impeccable with the merest hint of an East European accent.

Immigrant 2 did not speak more than a few words of English after some time here. And he had a vodka habit. And his initial ambitions were totally unrealistic. So compared to the locals, he multiplied his disadvantage from the off. His failure should not have been a surprise.

I am sure there are more lessons to draw from this. There are certainly differences between people in attitude and talent. A few years ago there were no hand car washes. Some immigrant spotted the gap in the market and had the initiative to roll his sleeves up and fill it. Some immigrants are now, years later, workers in car washes. Others own a chain of them and are making serious money (and I hope paying their taxes).

I also wonder what I would have done. I have some French and German from school, and a smattering of Russian I picked up on the chess-playing circuit. Would I, had it been possible when I was looking to restart my career when I left the church and had neither job nor home, have gone to another country with the attitude required to make a success of myself? I have friends who have done exactly that. Somehow I doubt I would have done the same, so I am not in a position to be critical of those that do so.

Richard III at Leicester

I'm not as young as I used to be - I know that now. Today I had planned a short drive, 40 miles, to Leicester to see the Richard III exhibition, then back and out again this evening, less than 20 miles, to Milton Keynes. I had to cancel the second event as the first wiped me out. So was it worth it?

The exhibition is at the Guildhall Museum in Leicester, which is definitely worth a visit in itself if you happen to be in the area. The Guildhall is adjacent to the Cathedral, which while rather nice inside is not any more nice than a good few parish churches I know, and a good deal less nice than some. It is the least attractive Cathedral I know, even allowing for my personal fondness for Southwark owing more than a little to it being the place I was ordained. As the majority of Bonnie's photos are of the cathedral, that tells you something.

I suppose the timing was bad - and that isn't a reference to the joke about Richard IIIs body having been there for 500 years and we turned up not long after it was moved. It was a cold day, and it was half term. Those are both bad conditions for standing on stone flagstones queueing for an hour without access to refreshments.

If the exhibition had been scintillating, that would have made up for it. "Wow, I'm glad I saw that - well worth the wait!" - I know I've had that experience in the past. But it wasn't. It was nice to see, interesting if you happened to be passing, and, crucially, also had not seen either the broadcast of the press conference announcing that the bones were indeed Richard III, or the 90 minute documentary on Channel 4 giving a pretty full account of the quest. There was only two things in the exhibition that had not been on one or other of the TV programmes, and obviously, in a small exhibition, a great deal was left out that was in the programmes. One of those things was a photograph of a mediaeval flag stone recovered from the long-destroyed Grey Friars church. The other was some feedback about modern scoliosis sufferers.

There were some nice informative displays - one of the skeleton particularly drew my attention - laid out on a table-size touch screen. I thought it was a good display - but there were children and teenagers milling around the table/screen, and as fast as I touched it and brought up a display I wanted to study, one of these youngsters touched it somewhere else and changed it.

I thought there were a lot of things that could have been done that maybe will be when the exhibition is reincarnated in the future. For example, something could be made of the Shakespearean exploitation of Richard's deformity to underwrite his villainy  First, he did not have a hunch back. Second we do not know, but it seems likely the extent of his deformity would have caused him pain, none the less he was known before he became king as a wise and fair administrator and valiant in battle. Deformity is not a sign of God's judgement on evil, nor a reason for condemnation of bullying.

Then there is room for a discussion of the Princes in the Tower issue - there is no evidence, but a statement of the arguments why one might think the popular rumour true, and arguments why not, would not be out of place. Prejudice enters into most opinions, and some rational evaluation might have made that point as well as suspending judgement in the particular case.

Another interesting, and related, issue is the strength of Richard's claim to the throne. If the Princes were illegitimate, and certainly when they were dead, he was, I think the rightful heir. So how good is the claim they were illegitimate? The issue is phrased with a judgemental tone "Richard had Parliament declare..." But if they were illegitimate Parliament was right to so declare and might have done so of its own initiative. In any case, how strong was Edward Tudor's claim? If Richard and Edward had gone before a court of law to settle the issue instead of slugging it out in Bosworth Field, what was the likely outcome?

Surely, too, there was room for a chart showing the genealogical evidence - why the modern descendants are known to be such, and how the DNA analysis works. I'd also have been interested in the work still unfinished on the male line (the modern descendants are of Richard's sister) - why is it more difficult? when are the results expected? and what might we expect to learn?

No doubt space was the main constraint. The exhibition area is small, and a lot of space was given over, correctly, to the project, leaving less for Richard.

In short - I'm glad I went. I wanted to see the exhibition. I knew it was not at the archaeological site, but I had hoped to see the actual excavation. Instead that area is closed to the public. But if I hadn't gone I'd have regretted it. But as I did go, I wish I had planned it better and chosen a warmer day without half term and therefore a shorter queue. I'd still have my feeling that the exhibition left me no wiser, but I might not have got home half dead.

Yesterday in Parliament

The Wolfenden Report came out in 1957 when I was almost 13. I remember the embarrassed response from my parents when I asked what some of the words meant. This, plainly, was not a subject to be pursued with them. Sexuality was another word that had no meaning for me - I don't think I'd even heard of it. But I was at a North London Boys Grammar School in a fairly tough area, and I did understand that my interest in my fellow pupils was not something it would be a good idea to share.

It was another 10 years before the Sexual Offences Act became law, and sexual relations between men were no longer criminal. (The law had never applied to women.) By that time I was a regular at a famous gay pub in Hampstead. The next 3 years still count as among the happiest of my life because I was among people who accepted me as I was, and from whom I had to hide nothing. I made friends in 1967 and 1968 who are still my friends now, 46 years later.

Over half a century after Wolfenden, it ought to be the case that a person's sexuality is not any reason for discrimination, and that no-one should feel that any aspect of their character has to be kept secret for fear of disapproval. Sadly that is not the case. Teenagers making the same discovery that I made are still vulnerable to the effects of homophobia and still even kill themselves, so great is their distress. That has to stop. Believe me, no-one chooses to be gay.

My sexuality evolved - after a 4 year relationship with Mike I discovered girls, and in fact I've been married 3 times. Happily I still have friends who remain as exclusively gay as I was in my teens and twenties, whom I value, and whose happiness matters to me. So I am delighted that last night we began to extend to them too the privilege of making a commitment to love another person for ever. Things go wrong. I am a walking testament to that. But making the commitment is a sign of hope, a statement of intent, and something that everyone loves to see. Few people don't smile when they see confetti being thrown.

I hope to see the process continue, and to witness gay friends of mine getting married. I'll remember my friends from the '60s, Peter and John, who were together longer than any of my marriages has lasted to date, until John died. I met Peter the other day, and saw the tears in his eyes as we shared memories of the man he loved. So my first gay wedding will be a happy day, and a long, long journey since, back in 1957, I asked my parents what "homosexual" meant. I had no idea that the report in the news applied to me.

Yesterday's Angiography

Well, in short I've been feeling worse than I expect to for my age for a while now, most worryingly with shortness of breath and increased use of my GTN spray – the one I take when I have chest pain with exercise. Not a lot, maybe 4-6 times in a year, but that compares with none at all since my surgery in 2004 otherwise. And I know better than anyone that while I am pretty strict about saturated fat in my diet most of the time, a lot of the flavours I love are strongly associated with it. My view has been that it takes time for cholesterol to build up in my heart, and as I'm nearly 70 I should balance life-preserving abstinence with life-enhancing moderate use. So I have a little cheese or bacon from time to time, occasionally cook with butter and don't place any restrictions on my host or the chef if I am eating out. But knowing that I am breaking the rules, and have symptoms associated with heart problems, was in itself worrying and stressful. There are other symptoms too, not associated with my heart, and I went to the doctor with a list.

Frankly, he put the majority on the back burner in order to deal with the heart issue first, and the Consultant at Kettering who had seen me before and already had angiography results to look at from 3 years ago, cut out the middle man and sent me for an immediate second go on the table. I was expecting the result to be that I needed a stent to keep one of the cardiac arteries open, maybe more than one. So I wasn't hopeful of a good result.

On top of that one of my friends had a bad experience with the cardiac unit at Kettering, which alarmed me, as my previous time there had been problem free.

So I presented myself and after a waiting period a nurse came to collect me – and Bonnie who was at my side. Let's say straight away that everything was done to put me at my ease. The first nurse I saw, Suzie, was calm, attentive and ready to answer any questions I had, as well as supervising, again very calmly, a student nurse on her first placement. My hands were cold, and my blood vessels none too prominent, and Suzie had a problem getting the cannula into place. So she left me to warm up and get some circulation back into my hands. After a while Eva appeared. Brimming with personality and confidence she dealt with the cannula in one go, supervised the form the student was taking information with, and told me about the other benefits of sedation before the procedure – it opens the arteries a bit and makes the doctor's job easier. An impressive young lady. Now I had to wait my turn.

Eventually Lisa turned up to get me into the lab – someone else who oozed charm and confidence and, ushering me into the lab and onto the table, put me completely at my ease. Everyone was patient and laughed politely when I made my old joke about not minding what I was called so long as it wasn't late for meals. The Registrar, Nancy, checked that I knew what to expect and said she'd tell me what she found, and I asked her to let me know, if she had the opportunity, to clear up the disagreement between Bonnie and me about how many stents had been put in when I had my bypasses. No problem. By the time they got the sedation started I was as relaxed and cheerful as I've been in a long time, totally confident in the expertise of the people around me.

The procedure took about 75 minutes, longer than usual. Lisa said that was because my bypasses made it more difficult. She actually went into more detail than that, but I won't bore you with it. The technician driving the machine – the table and the scanner move like synchronised swimmers to get the angles the doctor wants for the pictures – was tilting the scanner at crazy angles and moving it over my head with only a few millimetres clearance. I thought he was very good. I could hear Nancy talking to him – “Down a bit, can you go back just a fraction, oh yes, that's very good” - then she'd pause for a closer look or move on for another view.

I was aware how incredibly lucky I was. If this technology had been available 30 years ago when my mother died from coronary heart disease she would probably have lived a good while longer. It's amazing that they can inspect the interior state of the arteries supplying oxygen to my heart muscles. My first experience of angiography in 2004 had led directly to the urgent bypass surgery that has so far given me an extra 8 years of life. The two angiographies at Kettering have showed, among other things, that the blockages bypassed then are now closed, which would have killed me had there not been diversions in place.

After the procedure Nancy told me there was something she wanted to discuss with the Consultant, but she could tell me that the bypasses were working fine. Lisa took me back to the ward, and Nancy came along to explain what they'd found. Item one was that the single stent put in by Prof Taggart at Oxford in 2004 was itself blocked. But there is a bypass in place around it which was working perfectly. There seemed to be no change since my angiography 3 years ago, all my bypasses were working as they should, and there is no sign of further damage. But they would be recommending a change in my medication.

Now super-confident, ultra-knowledgeable Dave turned up to deal with the wound in my femoral artery, the access point they'd used to get to my heart, and he had a lot to say about my medication. The new stuff I have been given is supposed to open my arteries and improve the flow of oxygenated blood to my heart. There are two common side-effects I should note – headaches (darn, I get those already) and if I drink alcohol (if? Did he say if?) I may become light-headed. Well, that'll be a change, normally I fall asleep. Okay, seriously, I will have to drink less and be rigid about not driving after drinking. And they're going to do an echo-cardiogram to check for leaky valves, just in case that's what's causing my symptoms. Anyway, it certainly isn't any worsening of my coronary heart disease.

Dave went home leaving me to the gentle and cheerful ministrations of Sadie, at the wrong end of a 12 hour shift, who removed my cannula, organised tea and a sandwich, monitored my blood pressure, kept me comfortable, and was both efficient and friendly before she finally sent me home.

I am very grateful first to the cardiologist at Northampton who, in 2004, passed me over with an urgent tag and to Prof Taggart at the John Radcliffe in Oxford who did an excellent job fixing me up, and second to the staff of the Cardiac Unit and KGH who were superb, both in getting me on the table so quickly after my GP handed me over, and then, on the day, looking after me so well so that what could have been a very unpleasant and stressful experience actually went far better than could have been expected. And, to top it all, good news at the end.