***BREAKING NEWS***
Amelie's just taken her first steps. At about 6:20pm this evening she successfully walked three paces from the sofa to the crockery cupboard, where she wrestled with the child lock for a few seconds and tried to break a few mugs, before spotting my NHS ID card across the room, turning in the opposite direction, falling flat on her face and hurting her nose. She won't be trying that again in a hurry.

But on the subject of suffering, this time last year, I was on the verge of a sleepless night, as Amelie started fidgeting her way out of Lisa with her hands up. Twelve months on, I'm set for a short night again. Having been out all day in East Grinstead, I'm packing my bags tonight for Newcastle, where I'm due to spend twenty-four hours (you wouldn't want any longer) at the British Association of Retinal Screeners' annual conference.

It's taking place over two days at the Marriott Hotel in Gosforth Park, but we're not staying there. Oh no. We're staying in the pub next door. Apparently it's a lot cheaper. My boss, who arranged the accommodation, described it to us as "the adjacent hotel", but frankly when an establishment sends you a booking confirmation which states "Please check-in at the bar", you have to wonder if it's quite five star.

So assuming I can get up before the sun, I'll be at Brighton station at 7am tomorrow morning, on my way to The Falcon's Nest (which I think was an 80s soap opera). We're the only people heading away from Brighton for a conference this week. It's a shame, because news has reached me from this chap that the Prime Minister and his wife like to eat out in Preston Street. As do a lot of people with strong stomachs and no taste. My pals S & A were sampling some Lebanese cuisine there last night (Preston Street's a lot like Beirut), and they bumped into Gordon and Sarah outside the tattoo parlour. They were probably out buying a copy of The Sun.

But whilst it would be nice to stay in Brighton and stalk the Prime Minister for the rest of the week, it's time to say Auf Wiedersehn, Pet, and head for Newcastle. Unfortunately, anyone hoping for a pictorial review of my trip at the weekend will be sadly disappointed. Lisa's insisting I leave the camera at home so that she can take photos of a birthday party she's throwing on Friday. It's some kind of family do. I won't be going myself.

I had a patient today who told me that every morning when he takes his dog for a walk, he passes a fuchsia plant which appears red when he views it through his spectacles, and blue when he looks at it without. I was tempted to ask if he's been wearing a pair of 3D glasses from the local cinema, but instead I told the man I had no idea why that might be. So he proceeded to give me the name of the exact variety of fuchsia, in case that made any difference. I told him I haven't yet covered that genus in my training. He seemed a bit disappointed.

But that wasn't the only puzzle I tackled at Horsham Hospital today. In thirty-six hours I'll be on my way to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for the British Association of Retinal Screeners' 9th Annual Conference (feel free to peruse our agenda here), so I decided to invest in a puzzle magazine for the journey. Six hours on a train with seven female colleagues might not be as entertaining as it sounds.

I ended up in the Horsham branch of WHSmiths at lunchtime today, buying a book of Nonograms. Although the book in question calls them 'Hanjie'. I've no idea why. To be honest, I'd never even heard of them before today, but I tend to judge a book by its cover, and I liked the picture on the front.

Anyhoo, having spent the afternoon tackling the first puzzle in between patients, I think I'm hooked. Admittedly, having been at it for a good three hours, I feel I probably should have completed more than about ten percent of the least challenging puzzle on page one, but you don't have to be good at something to enjoy it. After all, Lisa loves cooking. And at the rate I'm going, it's the best value book I've ever bought. I know I'm a slow reader, but I'll still be on this one when I'm eighty.

The thing about Gordon Brown is that he's never in the right place at the right time. Amelie and I needed to go to Aldi yesterday morning for some Oatbran Flakes (half the price of Optivita, and twice as nice. Phil Vickery swears by them. I expect), but after Gordon's outrageous treatment at the hands of Barack Obama, we decided he'd appreciate the chance to meet someone who wanted to talk to him, and headed down to the Brighton Centre instead. I planned to ask him about his medication while he posed for a photo with Amelie.

Admittedly we did meet some very nice people on the seafront. Amelie tried to grab the tail of a police horse, and I spoke to the organisers of the Geoff Hyde is Innocent campaign. Two minutes of talking to me and they pretty much accepted that he's guilty. I can be quite persuasive. We also watched the leaders of the trade union protest march getting their placards ready, and tried to work out what they were protesting about. I think it was the fact that they hadn't been invited to the conference.

But despite meeting a few members of the Socialist Workers Party who didn't have jobs (which should mean automatic expulsion if you ask me), the one person we failed to spot was Gordon. At the time I assumed he was down at the chemist picking up his latest prescription, but apparently not. We arrived home two hours later to find this report on The Argus website. It turns out he was at church. But not just any church. Gloucester Place Baptist Church. A church we walk right past on our way to Aldi (although I don't think they mention that on their website). If we'd headed straight for the oatbran as planned, we'd have got to the chapel on time and bumped into Brown with the Baptists. As it was, we didn't stroll past until 12:45pm, by which time Gordon had downed the communion wine and gone to lunch. I need to keep a closer eye on his wife's Twitter account.

Anyhoo, I may have failed to flash Gordon with my camera, but I did take this photo of the Earth & Stars pub in Windsor Street...


The writing's on the wall for their signwriter...


I think he's been sniffing a lot more than pollen.

I spent yesterday looking after Amelie while Lisa went out for the afternoon. All in all, I think it went pretty well. The highlight was when I put her down for her lunchtime nap, spent an hour clearing up the mess she'd made in the living room, and then went back to find her asleep with a pair of hair straighteners in her cot. It's no wonder she has hair like Hitler. She'd also eaten half a sheet of A4 paper, so I'm now wondering if she's a spy. She was obviously destroying some kind of secret instructions. Possibly orders to wreck my DVD collection.

But in other news, we've got this picture on a mousemat at work, and after some tireless searching on Google this morning, I've finally located it online...


The spots on the butterfly are pupils, but the rest of the picture is made up entirely of diseased retinas. No, really. Never has a serious haemorrhage looked so pretty. It was created by Lewis Smith of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, and won a prize at the Ophthalmic Imaging Association Conference a few years ago. I presume this is why I have to ask my patients if they consent to their photos being used for research purposes. I usually say they'll be shown to medical students. I might have to change that to art students.

But on the subject of retinal detachments, I'm about to take Amelie on an ophthalmic field trip. We're off into town to look for Gordon Brown. So if you see any live TV news reports from Brighton seafront in the next couple of hours, that'll be us in the background. Being arrested for stalking the Prime Minister.

Back in June 2008, when Lisa had the feet of a clown and the belly of Buddha, I published this photo of her nephews...


Well, fifteen months on, we've just taken delivery of a new one...


Is it my imagination, or are they raising some kind of comedy character there? It's no wonder Amelie loves him.

I've spent today in Peacehaven, doing a clinic at the beautifully named Meridian Surgery. Or "the portacabin in the Co-op car park" as locals affectionately refer to it. Personally I'll work anywhere with a kettle and a power point, so I thought it was quite nice. Some of my colleagues object to having to set up our computer on a plastic picnic table, but it didn't really bother me. It helped me enjoy my sandwiches.

On the downside, there's not a lot of entertainment to be had in Peacehaven on the average Thursday lunchtime, and by the time I'd been around the Co-op and looked in the town's only charity shop, there wasn't a great deal to keep me occupied. But I did walk past a fine establishment in the shopping arcade which provides that oh-so-familiar combination of key-cutting and needlework supplies. They were advertising this in their window...


I expect it's for making Natty clothes.

Comet. They live electricals. Unfortunately they don't deliver them on time. Having paid an extra TWENTY-FIVE QUID (read it and weep) to guarantee delivery between 10am and 2pm today, Ian and Alan from Comet eventually turned up with my fridge freezer at 4:30pm. By that time, most of our food was as hot as my temper, but the good news is that it now has a nice new home. It's all in the bin.

But having somehow managed to cope all day with the hall furniture in the living room and no baby gate on the kitchen, Lisa successfully persuaded Comet Customer Services to agree to a refund of the delivery charge. Although I'm not sure they'll replace her fish fingers. Personally I was stuck thirty-three miles away in East Grinstead all day with a list of twenty-eight patients. Twenty-seven of whom turned up. You never get a cancellation when you need one.

I may not have been able to do much to help (although I'm sure it won't be long before the NHS launch an enquiry into the number of phone calls being made from consulting room 35 between 2pm and 4pm), but I did get to visit this place in my (very short) lunch break...


That's the Mount Noddy Recreation Ground. No, seriously. I think it's a gay cruising site for people with Big Ears.

It's ten o'clock, and I've just finished packing away the contents of my fridge...


That's what's known as a cool cat. And she refuses to be parted from her tuna.

There comes a point in life when you realise that the only way you're ever going to be cool again is to buy a new fridge freezer. So I've just parted with a week's wages and bought the one on the left. It's being delivered on Wednesday.

Admittedly, since Lisa turned into the Galloping Gourmet five months ago and started cooking all of Amelie's meals from scratch, we've needed more space in the freezer, but I think what finally made me decide to take the plunge and order something bigger was the moment I opened the door of our current model at 7pm last night and realised that everything had been gently defrosting for hours. It was a chilling discovery. But not for our food.

Some furious tinkering and fervent praying to St Bejam, the patron saint of frozen food, and the thing miraculously started working again at about eight-thirty. Though quite how, I've no idea. It was certainly nothing I did. By that time, I'd already ordered a new one from Comet (the ice man), which is probably just as well. I've opened the door of the freezer so many times today to check it's still working, that it's barely staying cold at all.

Tomorrow will be spent working out just how much I can eat before they come to collect the old one on Wednesday, moving all our belongings so they can get the new one down the hallway, and evacuating Amelie's home-made ready meals to Lisa's Mum's kitchen. That's in addition to seeing twenty-eight patients in Crawley and going to Asda. I'll need a cold drink by the evening, so let's hope the fridge is still working.

I'm not saying yesterday's movie was disappointing, but about thirty seconds into the film, I felt like saying 'Away We Go' to Lisa and walking out of the cinema. I've never disliked the opening scene of a movie quite as much as I did this one. It gave new meaning to the word 'distasteful', and proved that I'm clearly not as broad-minded as I thought I was. I felt like heading straight for 'District 9' on the next screen. At least aliens don't perform oral sex within seconds of being introduced.

Anyhoo, as the ticket on the left demonstrates, we arrived for the 1 o'clock showing of 'Away We Go' at precisely 1:03pm, which proves it's not always Amelie's fault that we're late for everything. If it wasn't for adverts and trailers, we might have missed that opening scene, and I wouldn't have viewed the rest of the film from a position of deep-seated hatred, but even then, I'm not sure it would have won me over. I tend to agree with this review, which calls it "an exercise in self-righteous, progressive banality", although The Times describes it pretty accurately too.

Unfortunately we didn't read those reviews before we went. We tended to believe the trailer instead, which presented a slightly different view, namely that it's the best film of the year so far. Which is probably true if you haven't seen any other films.

To be fair though, our viewing experience wasn't exactly helped by the company we kept at the Brighton Odeon. There were only five other people in the cinema (so obviously some people had read the reviews), which made it seem all the more unlucky that we found ourselves sat in front of an adult with learning difficulties, who'd been brought along by his carer. To be honest though, his habit of shouting "Where's Burt?" at the top of his voice, and reading aloud any text which appeared on the screen, was just about the most entertaining part of the film. It also provided a distraction from the girl in the back row who kept talking on her mobile phone.

I also feel I'd have enjoyed the whole thing more if I'd realised that the main character was supposed to be black. I thought she just had a bit of a tan...


I did wonder why there was a supposedly awkward moment early on in the film when the bloke's mother asked what colour the baby would be. I thought maybe she had dementia. I only twigged about an hour later that the girl was African American. I probably missed all sorts of racial tension that I had no idea was there. They need to make these things more obvious. Possibly by adding 'Ebony & Ivory' to the soundtrack.

But anyhoo, having lost £12.40 and ninety-eight minutes of our lives, we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for Amelie's birthday presents. We eventually called it a day when we'd picked up so much stuff in Toys R Us that we could no longer walk to the exit. Come October 2nd, she'll officially own more stuff than I do. And we may have to get rid of the sofa to make room for it.

It had to happen sooner or later, and that inevitable day has finally arrived: we've placed Amelie into care. I think the final straw was this:


To Amelie that's a love bite. To everyone else it's a dog bite. It looks like Lisa's been savaged by a pitbull.

So we've sent our daughter to live with her grandparents. Permanently. Well, until Sunday. She's not allowed back without a muzzle.

If nothing else, it'll give us a chance to clean the stains out of the carpet, fix all the things she's broken, and get some counselling for Chloe. But this afternoon, we're heading to the cinema. It's the first time we've been to see a film since Amelie was born, and it's a rare opportunity for complete and utter escapism. So Lisa's insisting we go to see a film about a couple having a baby. Apparently the science fiction movie I wanted to see is "boring".

So we're leaving in half an hour to catch the 1pm showing of Away We Go. It was written by a husband and wife team after she'd given birth to their first baby and he'd produced A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. So we should be able to identify with the authors.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Phil, we've heard about the cancer tests, the anthrax pills, the indecent assaults, the suicide drugs and the cattle prod, but what's happened recently with your prostatitis?"

Well it's funny you should ask. As it happens, I actually took a break from circumnavigating Sussex today, and headed back to the urologist this morning. To be honest it was bad timing, because I had to attend a 'Mental Health Act Awareness Training' lecture at work this afternoon, and frankly forty-five minutes of that would anaesthetise you for virtually any procedure. I was almost catatonic by the end. But that wasn't until 3pm this afternoon. When I walked into the urology department at 11:30 this morning, I was fully awake and capable of feeling pain.

Since I first received an appointment letter in March, my consultant has been named as Mr Larner, and I've seen the same chap every time. Which is fantastic continuity of care. Or it would be if I'd actually been seeing the right man. I discovered this morning that the bloke I've been calling Mr Larner for the past six months is actually an underling whose name I can't pronounce. Mainly because I wasn't listening when they told me what it was.

Today, I finally got to meet the top man. And I know he's the top man because he took one look at my notes, shook his head, and told me I've been on completely the wrong treatment all this time. Apparently the four different antibiotics I've tried over the past two years will never eradicate the type of infection I've got (I'd explain why, but I didn't understand it myself), and I should have been given a different drug months ago.

So I'm now on Tamsulosin. For up to six months. Or I will be when I can get it from the chemist. Mr Larner's confident that within a few weeks I'll be pain-free for the first time since 2006. Unfortunately he also warned me that I have a 1-in-16 chance of experiencing this side effect. That's a blog post to look forward to.

I've been all over the place this week. In more ways than one. Having crept to Crawley on Monday, I was stuck in Uckfield all day yesterday, and then up in Crowborough today, seeing people from as far afield as Tunbridge Wells. As one of my patients said to me in Horsham last week, "You're like a concert pianist. You turn up at a different venue each day, perform on the equipment provided, and then go home again". That says a lot about the calibre of people I see in Horsham. If it had been Brighton, he'd have said gigolo.

I had the outpatients department to myself at Crowborough Hospital today, so rather than waste a receptionist on me, they'd stuck this sign on the unmanned desk...


I've never been called a retinal technician before. It made me feel I should be wearing a white coat and looking at test tubes. I was tempted to cross it out and put 'doctor', but to be honest, most of my patients assume I'm one anyway. One lady I saw today told me that she's just recovering from swine flu and hasn't been out of the house in a week, which is not the kind of news you want to hear as you're bending over someone's face with an eye dropper in your hand. I was just praying she wouldn't sneeze.

But the prize for Patient of the Week goes to a chap I met yesterday, who happens to be the world's leading authority on Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7 hydroplane. He came in wearing a t-shirt plugging his new book on the subject. And a copy of it in his bag, in case I was interested. I have to say, when I got up yesterday morning, I didn't expect to find myself standing in Uckfield Hospital having an in-depth conversation with a grown man about a bear called Mr Whoppit, but that's the NHS for you. I should have asked him for a lift home. I bet his car's a lot faster than mine.

Oooh look, it's a Glitzy Witch!


She just needs a pointy hat, a broomstick and a box of black hair dye for Chloe. Some darker underwear wouldn't go amiss either. Frankly even Liz Hurley would think twice about a dress like that.

When I said to Lisa late last night "Remind me to try on Amelie's witch outfit when I get home from Uckfield tomorrow", she immediately replied "But it'll never fit you". That's the sense of humour I fell in love with. I think.

As it happens, I'm not the only one unlikely to squeeze into that dress by the end of October. Having wrestled the girl to the floor in an attempt to get it over her head, Amelie's going to have to cast some serious spells if it's going to fit her for Halloween. Maybe her grandparents were right after all.

But for now, she's a scary, cackling, wicked old witch...


Method acting never was her strong point.

It's Amelie with an Arab!


You can tell from the way her eyes are shifting nervously to the side that she thinks she's being held by a terrorist, but we're aiming to knock that kind of racial stereotyping out of her head by the time she starts nursery school. Oh, and before you ask, the red thing she's eating is a squeezy liver used by the NHS to educate people about Hepatitis. It's obvious when you know. She performed a biopsy on it shortly afterwards by biting a lump out of the side, but spat the thing out when I told her we had no bacon to go with it.

Anyhoo, as the picture above demonstrates (kind of), we spent yesterday afternoon with our friends S & A. It's the first time we've been over to their flat since Amelie learnt to wreck a home in less than thirty seconds. And having spent three hours there, I'd say it's the last time we'll be invited too. Unless they decide they like living with the contents of their coffee table all over the floor. Frankly the only thing she didn't destroy was their copy of Full House magazine with the article about Chloe. Which would have been my first choice for the bin.

Aside from all the things Amelie helped herself to, she also received a gift from our hosts, and is now the proud owner of a 'Glitzy Witch Outfit', which according to the label is "Wickedly Fabulous!". Yes indeed, it may only be mid-September, but it seems the Pound Shop have got their Halloween range in. Apparently it's right across the aisle from their Christmas stuff.

In return, Amelie gave them a picture of herself, and received an assurance that it would go straight down the toilet. Or above the toilet. I forget which. Either way, it probably explains why Lisa locked herself in the bathroom for ten minutes. Fortunately I've known Lisa for six years now, so when she disappeared for longer than expected and we heard a distant knocking, I immediately knew she was trapped in another room. I was just surprised she hadn't taken the wrong turning, walked out of the front door, and fallen down the steps. That would have been more her style.

With Lisa rescued, and a very nice lunch eaten, there was just time for us to examine an interactive health education tool from the makers of Viagra, which gave new meaning to the term 'hands-on', and left me feeling slightly stunned. But if they can get hold of another one, I want it for my mantelpiece. That done, we left before they noticed Amelie's fingerprints on their record collection, and began the short drive home...

... at which point we started getting messages from Big Sis. It turns out that S & A are living in some kind of mobile phone black hole, and for the previous half hour, Sis had been texting and calling to say she was outside my flat. We arrived home ten minutes later to find her complaining that she was freezing cold. So I took her inside and immediately opened the window. Here she is warming up on the sofa...


To be honest, I think Amelie looked happier with the terrorist.

Anyhoo, Big Sis could only stay for an hour, but that was long enough for her to tell us what the rest of the family are saying about Amelie's thighs. Apparently the words "chunky" and "chubby" are being bandied about, the moment Lisa and I leave the room. And for once they're not being used to describe me. Fortunately we took some comfort from the news that it's nothing compared to the way Big Sis's old work colleagues are talking about her.

But despite the insults, the lack of time, and the fact that Chloe kept sneaking into the back of every photo like Alfred Hitchcock with hair, we still managed to have a fun evening...


Amelie's lost her tights and Big Sis has removed her sunglasses, but these things happen in a game of strip poker.