I've just got in from visiting my mum in hospital. Thankfully the operation she had today went very well. I didn't want to mention anything before as I am strangely supersitious about these things.

It is interesting to see my mum in hospital mode. I think she has been in and out of hospitals a fair bit, mainly because she got something called rheumatic fever as a child and it damaged her heart. So she started with that, and then had open heart surgery back in the early 1960's to unblock a heart valve, followed by regular annual checkups and then two new artificial heart valves on her 70th birthday in 2003, and a pacemaker just over a month ago.

Ever since I can remember my mum told me 'not to get too used to having her around', this was because of the heart thing. But today I've come to the conclusion that she must really have the constitution of an ox.

Despite artificial heart valves and a pacemaker, and having had a general anaesthetic (to say nothing of the actual operation), she was bright and alert and chatted on for a couple of hours. No problem. You'd think nothing had happened if it wasn't for the intravenous drip thing!

I'm just so impressed really.