Brighton might be the most Godless city in Britain, but I'm sure someone up there is playing a joke on me. My mobile rang about twenty minutes ago (which is unusual in itself - I'm quite an unpopular person), so I answered it, and without so much as a hello, a woman's voice said "Have you still got the cat?".

For a moment I thought I was involved in some kind of hostage negotiation, so I played it dumb and said "The cat?". She replied "Yes, have you still got it?".

I was slightly thrown, but back in February when Chloe was conquering the world, it was quite common for complete strangers to phone me on my mobile and propose photo shoots, film premieres and free tins of cat food in return for dubious services rendered. So I assumed The Argus had given out my number again.

I replied "Do you mean Chloe?". She said "Is that the white cat?". I said "Yes". She said "Have you still got it?".

To be honest, we were getting nowhere fast, so I decided to cut straight through the confusion and ask "Who is it speaking?". She ignored me, and said "It's about the free white cat. Have you still got it?"

The word 'free' bothered me. Chloe has never worked for nothing. So I decided to ignore her this time, and instead asked "Where did you get my number?". She replied "Gumtree". I promptly told her she'd got the wrong person. So she put the phone down without saying goodbye.

As it turns out, she was talking about this creature...


I found the advert on Gumtree after five minutes of searching. It's a white cat which is one quarter Persian, lives in London, and is free to "a warm home". I presume his current owner can't pay the heating bills. But most bizarre of all, despite the billions of possible combinations in an eleven digit mobile, the phone number in the advert is just one digit different to my own. Godless, my foot.

Breaking news from this weekend's Argus...


Apparently we haven't got a prayer. Just look at that couple of heathens in the background, clutching their material possessions close to their chests and making straight for the rack of sunglasses to protect their eyes from the light of the world. They're committing at least three of the deadly sins just by walking down North Street.

But the good news is that Jonah's on his way to save us all from eternal darkness. He'll have a whale of a time in Brighton.

There are definite perks to working for the NHS. This sign has gone up outside the pub down the road from me...


Personally I'm more of an eater than a drinker, so I'd prefer a happy hour at Pizza Hut, but I took the photo for Amelie. She loves that meerkat commercial. It's the only thing capable of stopping her in her tracks when she's climbing over the back of the sofa. Frankly I'm surprised her first word wasn't 'Simples'.

And on the subject of Amelie's feral behaviour, she's become very crafty in the past twenty-four hours. Her current goal in life is to get herself onto the sofa so that she can climb over the back and grab the phone, the pens, the calculator, and basically anything she can reach from the table. Unfortunately, despite being the tallest one-year-old in Britain, she can't make it onto the sofa without assistance. So she's started resorting to trickery.

She'll now make her way over to her toybox, pick up her favourite 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' book, and bring it over to me on the sofa, where she holds it up, puts on her most angelic expression, and politely asks me to read it to her (in a non-verbal kind of a way). Which is all very sweet. Unfortunately, the moment I pick her up, open the book and start singing, she dives off my knee and is halfway up the back of the sofa, legs dangling, playing cat and mouse with Chloe and my computer equipment, all before I've reached the first chorus of "knees and toes". Frankly she's more of a fibber than Lisa.

But subterfuge aside, I've been buoyed by a message we received yesterday evening from Lisa's sister, asking if we have any objections to Nephew Number Three (he's the loopy one) putting a photo of me, Lisa and Amelie up on the wall of his nursery school. Apparently they're doing some kind of display of 'important people'. Personally I was chuffed to bits. Until I found out that he really only wanted a photo of Amelie. Lisa and I just happen to be in the background.

But in other news, I've been visiting the website of the Illinois Virtual School this afternoon. No, really. It's an educational establishment in Peoria County "where students in grades 5-12 are provided with online courses taught by federally designated, highly-qualified teachers". And they're currently linking to my micro fiction. Which might explain why I've just received this e-mail from a confused American child:

"In My Daughter and I was the narrator supposed to be the mother or the father humself?"

Obviously answering that question would effectively be helping a student to cheat with his homework. So I think I'll just send it back with the spelling corrected.

I've spent today with cliff and the shadows.


That's me on Peacehaven seafront. It's like the white cliffs of Dover for people on income support. The shadows were back in my consulting room at the Meridian Surgery. It gets about half an hour of sun a day, and is generally colder than Christmas in Lapland. I took my milk out of the fridge to keep it cool.

The last time I did a clinic there, I mentioned that there's not a lot to do in Peacehaven on the average weekday lunchtime, so finding myself stuck there again today, I decided to go further afield than the local shopping precinct, and head for the coast with my sandwiches. It turned out to be very nice. If a little hazardous...


The last time I was hit by flying chalk was in a maths lesson at school. That'll teach me to chat at the back of the class.

Anyhoo, between chalk and cheese sandwiches, I had a very pleasant lunchtime walk, and a good working day with twenty-five of the nicest patients you could ever wish to meet. It must be the sea air which brings out the best in people. Having stopped and read a tourist information sign on the clifftop, I also discovered why the Meridian Surgery is so called. Apparently it's because the Prime Meridian runs straight down from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich to the Co-op car park in Peacehaven, bisecting the surgery in two. I'm the only man ever to do retinal screening in two hemispheres at once.

But having finished my war on Peacehaven's retinopathy levels, I returned home to news of Amelie's close encounter with the health visitor. Apparently the woman was very impressed with Amelie's alertness and verbal skills (she's hyperactive and noisy), but it looks as though we're raising a monster. Not only is she in the top 8% by weight for girls of her age (I've already put her name down for fat camp) but she's also in the top 5% by height. So she'll make one heck of a netball player, but she might not be able to bend over to pick up the ball.

If you're going to carry out a daring raid on the bathroom, make sure you go in disguise...

We're still studying that CCTV footage in an attempt to identify the person responsible for tipping that bucket of washing all over the floor.

Now that Amelie's reached the grand old age of one, she's getting a home inspection from the health visitor tomorrow afternoon. I think it's primarily to check that we're looking after her, and not standing back while she grabs bottles of bleach from the bathroom. Which is why the disguise is such a good idea. I'd like to see that evidence stand up in court.

Lisa's hoovered and dusted, and we gave Amelie a bath an hour ago. That was shortly before she dressed up as a rabbit and stuck her hand down the toilet. But fortunately germs no longer hold any fear for me. I was given an alcohol miniature at work today, and it's done wonders for my self-confidence. No, really. It's actually a small bottle of sanitising hand gel which clips to my belt for use in medical emergencies. Or when an unsavoury patient insists on shaking my hand. I might attach it to Amelie's changing mat.

On the downside, now that we've cleaned Am's face, the bruise above her eye where she headbutted my Dad's music stand on Saturday seems a lot more noticeable. And when you combine that with her morbid obesity, and the fact that Lisa's cut off the circulation to her feet by forcing them into shoes which are patently too small, I think we could be less than twenty-four hours from foster care. At least that's what we're hoping.

I saved somebody's sight today. No, really. Halfway through my clinic this morning, I spotted a lot more than just a twinkle in the eye of a young female patient of mine. She was only in her thirties, with good vision, and at first glance her retinas looked fairly innocuous. But upon closer inspection I spotted something I was concerned about, and the more I looked, the more I felt it was serious.

As a trainee, I'm not yet allowed to grade retinal photos on my own, so I looked up the rota to see which of my colleagues were in the office today, and promptly e-mailed them with the details. Ten minutes later they'd looked at the photos I'd taken; within twenty they'd agreed with my diagnosis, and half an hour after seeing her, the lady was being urgently referred to the Sussex Eye Hospital. If I hadn't spotted what I did, her photos would have sat in the grading queue for up to four weeks. By which time she could have been blind. So even if I do nothing else in my career (which is a distinct possibility), I've made a life-changing difference to someone. I should probably ask for a pay rise. Or a free case of Tamiflu.

But moving on to more important news, I've always known that at some point in Amelie's life, good-looking young men would set her world alight with flowers and chocolate. I just didn't expect it to be at twelve months old. And with a musical cake slice...

Mind you, I don't think she's the only girl in their lives. There's a photo of Dolly Parton in the background.

Anyhoo, we spent yesterday afternoon with Amelie's adopted uncles, Stefan and Andrew. If you're wondering why you've never heard of them before, it's because I used to refer to them as S & A. Fortunately I've now worked out how to spell their names. Saturday was spent with my parents (Mr & Mrs Gardner), who kindly agreed to accept more evacuees from my living room shelves in an attempt to save them from Amelie's bombing campaigns. Their loft is now so full of my stuff, there's barely any room for the woodworm.

The most marked difference between the two days was in the catering. My Mum served me low calorie ready meals, while Andrew fed me cake. I was going to work out how many Weight Watchers points were in the chocolate cream icing, but Lisa's calculator won't accept numbers that big.

Anyhoo, the good thing about Stefan and Andrew is that they're like a cross between Uncles and Sugar Daddies. Not only will they play with Amelie for hours on end while we nap on the sofa, but they're always buying her stuff. Admittedly most of it comes from Poundland, but that's beside the point. Where else can you get a plastic flower which ignites in a ball of flames before your very eyes, and then unfurls into a pretty flower with a candle on each petal, whilst playing the muzak version of Happy Birthday? It was a sight to behold. And well worth any lung damage we suffered by breathing in the toxic fumes from the unregulated Chinese factory which made it.

As if that wasn't enough, Amelie is now well and truly kitted out for Halloween. She may have outgrown her glitzy witch outfit, but thanks to some shrewd shopping in the pound shops of Eastbourne, she now has the same costume in a bigger size, plus a pointy hat, a green wig and a broom that's taller than she is. The broom is a particular bargain, as she can use it all year round. Stefan kindly offered to model the wig, which resulted in Amelie bursting into tears the moment he put it on. Either it was very scary, or she was upset that he'd worn it without her permission.

On top of all that, Amelie received a coat from H & M which is so nice, I feel like having three more kids just to make use of it. I'll run that idea past Lisa later. And then there was the cuddly dog in the furry kennel. Frankly we came away from their flat looking like we'd been on the Generation Game. If we carry on like this, my parents are going to need a second loft.

Amelie's had a busy weekend visiting her grandparents yesterday and her honorary uncles today, all of which has left her Daddy too tired to string a sentence together. So rather than a report on the two houses she's wrecked in the past twenty-four hours, here's a photo of her relaxing after her bath this morning in the hooded rabbit towel her Auntie Big Sis gave her for her birthday...


There's a fine line between bonny bunny and Ku Klux Klan.

On September 30th, our good friend Linda read about Amelie taking her first three steps, and said "Wait until she can order pizzas on your credit card!"

That was ten days ago. This was 9am this morning...

She even grabs a pen to write down her order.

We had the last laugh though: Pizza Hut don't open until midday.

I don't know what it is about Amelie's friends, but none of them seem to have any money...


We've actually received two of those in the space of two days. The one above came yesterday (the 8th), but my postman has no idea what day of the week it is. He put it through my letterbox together with an envelope clearly addressed to "Rear Basement Flat". Frankly the only strike he should be contemplating is one to the back of the head. And I'd gladly cross a picket line to administer it.

Today's item was a late birthday card from one of these people, but having paid the administration charge online for yesterday's item, I'm still awaiting redelivery to find out what it is and who it's from. It had better be worth more than £1.17, otherwise I'm seriously out of pocket. I'll be deducting it from Amelie's trust fund.

But on the subject of babies, I have major maternity news from the Royal Sussex County Hospital. It's a well known fact around these parts that I'm the only person in the entire Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust who reads the Chief Executive's Friday Message every week. I can't tell you how many odd looks I get on a Friday afternoon when I open that e-mail. Admittedly it's not easy to concentrate amidst the sound of two thousand people simultaneously clicking the delete button, but personally I like to see what the man's got to say.

And today it was well worth the effort. In fact, I shall copy and paste his announcement for posterity:

"Dear everyone,
At the beginning of this week we started offering the best practice antenatal screening 'combined' test for Down’s syndrome at the County and PRH. This involves offering pregnant women a blood test and an ultrasound scan the combined results of which show how likely it is that the baby will have Down’s syndrome. If the risk is shown to be high, further tests can then be arranged to help confirm whether the baby has the condition. Pregnancy is an exciting time but it is also an anxious time with a lot to think about and decide in a relatively short period of time. Prior to this week, pregnant women from Brighton and Hove needed to travel to King’s College Hospital in London for the combined screening test and women from Mid Sussex could have the scan at PRH but not the blood test. The option to have the combined test locally will be easier and better for families."

I have to say, that is fantastic news. In March of last year, Lisa did indeed have to travel up to King's College Hospital in London for that nuchal scan, and coming only a week after I started my new job (and met the Chief Executive), I didn't like to ask for the day off. So she had to do it alone. Well, alone apart from the skinflint in the photo above, who met her in London and escorted her to the hospital. She'd never have found it otherwise.

So the announcement that the pregnant women of Brighton no longer have to get on a train in the first trimester is actually quite a major one. I did a search on Google for 'Royal Sussex County Hospital nuchal scan' to see if the press have picked up on the news yet, but sadly it just took me to AmelieGardner.com. Which makes me wish I'd actually finished that website. I abandoned the project a year ago when I realised my blog was becoming Amelie's homepage, and she had no need for the gift of second site.

But talking of the poster child of the NHS, Amelie's not the only one getting her face into official health service literature. Yesterday my colleagues and I received a positive report from the national body which inspects retinal screening programmes, so to celebrate, we all abandoned the office for five minutes and went out onto the grass with a medical photographer to have our picture taken. We're hoping to be in the next issue of Talkback, the Trust magazine. Amelie might be a poster child, but I'm on the verge of becoming a centrefold.

I've had a day and a half in East Grinstead today. In addition to driving for more than two hours through the kind of rising water levels rarely seen outside Western Samoa, I've met a variety of interesting people, most of whom wanted to complain about things which had nothing to do with me. Two of them weren't even my patients. And one of them chased me down a corridor just to register her grievance. I wouldn't mind, but she was eighty-eight and I couldn't outrun her.

But aside from acting like the East Grinstead branch of ACAS all day, I've met a lady who has to wear a leg brace after she trod on a three-pin plug in her bare feet, an octogenarian American from Washington state who's just moved to West Sussex (go figure), and a man who told me he's going into hospital on October 29th for a major operation on his knee. I replied "So no trick-or-treating for you this year then!". He didn't smile. I felt slightly awkward.

But the highlight of my day was when I bid farewell to one of my patients and she walked out of the door with the cheerful words "Have a good Christmas!". I might do my next clinic in a Santa hat.

It's impressive just how quickly Amelie can learn a new skill. At 5:40pm today, she'd never once climbed onto the coffee table. In fact, the thought had barely even crossed her mind (she's been far too busy trying to scale the back of the sofa). But that was an hour ago. It's now six-forty, and she's done it about eight times. She can climb that TV unit like a stepladder, knock over the television and stand on the table pulling books off the shelf faster than you can say 'social services'...

She'll be on top of the bookcase by this time tomorrow.

I've started a Weight Watchers diet today, so it's a miracle I've got the energy to write this. When I suddenly felt dizzy halfway through my clinic this morning, I didn't know if it was because I'd forced myself into work with the lingering symptoms of flu, or because I'd eaten the breakfast of an anorexic. The fainting and feelings of weakness will all be worth it though. As Lisa regularly tells me, "Amelie doesn't want fat parents". She'd obviously rather be alone in her obesity.

So as of today, Lisa and I are on a joint crusade of weight loss. We're following the Weight Watchers diet, but as luck would have it, we don't actually have to attend any meetings or part with any cash. Lisa's been on Weight Watchers for about twenty years now, so she's got all the gumph, and what she doesn't know about daily points allowances isn't worth knowing. It's only water retention and big bones which are keeping her from size zero.

So she's worked out my eating plan, lent me her points calculator, and is offering to weigh me weekly in public. I've declined that offer. I was too ill to go shopping on Saturday, but instead I sat at the computer and ordered the entire Weight Watchers range from Tesco Online. There's now enough low calorie food in the fridge to keep an obese person going for... oooh, about five minutes. But it's going to last me the week. I'll be so thin by Christmas that people will think I'm a Matchmaker.

And on the subject of Christmas, I asked my parents for some top-of-the-range rechargeable batteries for my camera last year. They were so expensive that my Mum initially told me they couldn't afford them, but having laid a big guilt-trip on her, she naturally backed down and bought them for me anyway. I received them as a surprise gift on Christmas Day. It was an unforgettable moment.

Well I say unforgettable. I discovered yesterday that whilst I was in Newcastle on Friday, Lisa took so many photos of Amelie that she drained my batteries, had no idea they were rechargeable, and chucked them in the bin. So if you're reading this, Mum, can you put them on my Christmas list? You've got twelve weeks to save up.

Lisa's advised me to stay in bed today for the good of my health. Well, what she actually said was "I don't want to see your face in here tomorrow", but I think that's what she meant. So I'm typing this on my laptop, propped up by a couple of pillows. To be honest, I'm a bit better today. Yesterday my head was so bad, I was on the verge of phoning NHS Direct for some Tamiflu. Or seeing if my old swipe card would get me into the hospital pharmacy. Today I've downgraded my status to an uncommon cold.

But anyhoo, germs weren't the only thing I brought back from Newcastle. I also have this in a presentation folder...


I like the way they've used a retinal photograph as the background for the certificate. It's what you might call an eyecatching design.

To be honest, most of Thursday and Friday is a bit of a sleep-deprived blur. I'm not sure whose idea it was to travel more than seven hundred miles and attend a full day's worth of lectures, all in the space of thirty-six hours, but they want their head examined. Preferably with more than a retinal camera. By Thursday evening we were staggering around the hotel like cast members from The Night of the Living Dead.

Our journey up to Newcastle on Thursday morning was actually pretty good. If you ignore the fact that I had to get up at 4:30am. The train from Kings Cross was surprisingly empty, and we spent the time discussing important topics such as the bowel movements of a sick colleague, the Brighton branch of the Women's Institute, the joys of knitting, and the staff of the sewing machine shop in North Street, whilst flicking through copies of Vogue and The Lady magazine. Did I mention I was the only man on this trip?

Having spotted the Angel of the North from the train window and felt a slight sense of disappointment, we arrived in Newcastle shortly after midday and started looking for Ant and Dec. Or failing that, a taxi. Twenty minutes later, we were at the Falcons Nest. I have to say, it's not quite as it appears on the internet. It is a pub, but it has its own Bates Motel style accommodation block just across the car park. It was actually very nice. And it's next door to a drive-thru McDonalds, which is handy. So we checked in at the bar (two hours before we were meant to), dumped our bags in our rooms (which hadn't yet been cleaned), and headed straight over the roundabout to the Marriott Hotel.

Meals were included in our conference package, but unfortunately there's no such thing as a free lunch when you arrive half an hour late. The buffet looked like it had been hit by a plague of locusts, and we were reduced to scavenging the scraps from the rich man's table. Fortunately the deep fried crab cakes had proved particularly unpopular with the other diners, so we ate about six of those each. And followed them up with a buttered croissant and two cream slices. I kept expecting Gloria Hunniford to turn up with a free cholesterol test.

But having lined our stomachs with fat, it was eyes down for the British Asociation of Retinal Screeners' Annual Conference. I mean that quite literally. By the time the first speaker took to the stage, we'd been up for nine hours, had very little sleep, and were all ready for an afternoon nap. I could barely keep my eyes open. When we eventually broke for coffee, I loaded up on so much caffeine I was practically sweating Red Bull.

I think if I have one criticism of the conference, it's that they didn't provide signing for the deaf. Not that anyone was hard of hearing, but the microphones were turned down so low that we could barely catch a word some people were saying. I was reduced to lip-reading at one point. There was also a frustrating moment when one of the speakers cracked a joke, the front of the hall erupted in laughter, and the back half looked at each other blankly. Next time, I'm booking the front row.

But that aside, it was all very interesting. Kind of. I enjoyed the hour for survivors of External Quality Assurance visits (our version of Ofsted inspections), which was a bit like an AA meeting for rock-bottom retinal screeners, although some of the lectures were more dry than a case of AMD. I did learn an interesting way to impress your patients though. Apparently you wait until one of them comes in reeking of cigarette smoke, then you look at their photos thoughtfully and say "Hmmm... I can tell from your retinas that you're a smoker". Apparently it blows them away.

Unfortunately I learnt that technique from one of my colleagues over dinner. We didn't really interact with the expert speakers or other screeners, which was a bit of a shame. It's what happens when you're so exhausted you can barely speak. You don't feel like making conversation, never mind new friends.

Somehow we made it through dinner, failed to win the table quiz, refused to join in the dancing, and eventually retired to our beds at 11pm. Breakfast on Friday was another buffet affair, which turned out to be quite useful: we all took extra bagels to eat for lunch on the train home. And what a journey home that turned out to be.

The conference finished at 1:15pm, and having taken a taxi back to the city centre, passed a café called 'Scrumpy Willow & the Singing Kettle' (that's it on the right, photographed through the fog on the Tyne), looked in a couple of charity shops, and bought a pair of Gucci trousers for £2.75 (which I'm sure can't be fake), we caught the 14:34 train back to London.

Fortunately our seats were reserved. If they hadn't been, we'd have stood the whole way. The train was packed full of bad-tempered people fighting over seats, standing in corridors, and complaining to staff. I didn't dare go to the toilet in case I came back to find a tattooed Geordie refusing to vacate my seat. Back in London, things went from bad to worse. I know it was rush hour, but I have never been on such a crowded tube train. Frankly battery farm chickens have more breathing space. I thought I was going to pass out at one point. As did the person who got stuck in the doors, had a panic attack, and had to be rescued by the driver.

By the time I got home, I'd lost my voice and found a new meaning for the word headache. I'll be back in the hospital on Monday morning, but possibly as a patient, not a screener.

I've come back from Newcastle with a bad case of Tyne flu, so my detailed report on recent advances in the field of optical coherence tomography will have to wait. But while I die quietly in the corner of a darkened room, here are a few photos of Amelie on her birthday. Needless to say I'm not in any of them. But in a few years time, when she asks where I was, I'll tell her I was behind the camera. About four hundred miles behind the camera.

She's had cards...


... presents...


... cake...


... pizza...


... ice cream...


... and bubbles...


But most of all, she's had fun with her family...


Well, most of them.

Happy Birthday Amelie!


I'm giving her a bib with a hood, and a pair of rubber gloves.