Like most busy families, we've been overwhelmed by a ridiculously busy end-of-term diary and start-of-holiday activities. Well, I'm going to take a short break myself - just for a few days - so I'll see you soon!
The only real lesson to be learned from Alex's story is that earlier diagnosis might well have saved his life.
So worth watching, for Alex's sake.
I'll be finding out all about it.
Fascinating stuff. Listen live on Thursday morning.
Hope the sun shines!
Cole and Cane Armitage are both professional "FreeRunners" - which is a type of performance athletics. They work alongside their brother Chase in Basingstoke. Their team already holds more than 15 Guinness World Records. Today, Cole and Cane showed me what they can do against a wall at the back of the BBC, and something called the "human scales" which you can see in this picture...!
So today, at midday, we turned our chairs around and Andrew Peach, our breakfast show presenter and head of programmes here at BBC Radio Berkshire, interviewed me. As I said, a strange feeling and surprising how close to the surface are those painful memories!
But at one stage it was nearly all upstaged by a pesky wasp.
I bloomin' hate wasps.
And no matter how professional I might THINK I am, a wasp stopped me in my tracks. And I turned from being a thoughtful and reflective interviewee into a panicking idiot.
Several swats from me simply made the matter worse. Now I was dancing around the studio, wielding a screwed up copy of The Daily Telegraph, all to no avail, whilst Andrew resorted to a soliloquy about goodness knows what!
Finally, in comes my producer John, with an even bigger copy of The Times, belts it onto the floor, then mashes it into the carpet with his big leather boot.
Then we got back to the business of radio.
As you do.
I'm preparing a special article for next week's papers, too - in particular, The Sun, with which I joined forces to launch a fund raising appeal that ultimately made several hundred thousand pounds for research.
It was a strange and uncomfortable relationship. Until then, The Sun had been one of my worst nightmares - a newspaper which had always relished in pursuing me and producing some pretty horrid headlines about me. But they wanted to do something for cot death, they were the biggest paper of the time, and I knew it could work. So I agreed to work with them.
During my research just in the last few weeks, I came across a box of old cuttings - and among them were the front pages from that dreadful week 20 years ago. There was The Sun. And just look at the byline - the name of the reporter who wrote the story. If you can't quite make it put from my blurred pic, it reads "Andy Coulson". So that's what he was up to 20 years ago. Wonder where he'll be next week.
There have, over the years, as you can imagine, been several incidents where I've had a call from a newspaper reporter who's said things that have gobsmacked me. After you've got over the shock that someone seems to know more about you than, well...you, you sit down in surprise and try to work out "how on earth could they know that?" even if it wasn't entirely true.
One in particular was about a mortgage deal, and I hadn't even discussed it with my family or advisers or anyone. Absolutely no-one knew but the mortgage company and me. And when the deal came through, they left a message for me on my mobile.
Now I'm wondering - unless someone in the mortgage company decided to squeal to the press - phone hacking could well be an explanation. The reporter knew all of the facts - exact sums of money, everything.
I will be pursuing.
She's Nicola May, who decided to write a chicklit book, after trying out a load of different jobs following redundancy. Many of them were hilarious, many downright strange - but she thought they'd make good material for a book. But her sheer drive to get it published and marketed should, in my opinion, recommend her for any future job in marketing, let alone as an author.
Through Twitter and other networking (including her own website, of course!) she has managed to get the book, "Working It Out" into Waterstones (yes, a self-published book!), onto Kindle and onto Amazon. What's more, as a self-published author, she's even got a season of signings at stores throughout the South. I have never heard of that before.
Good on you, Nicola. You deserve to do well.
Edna Flook lived in Tilehurst until her death just eighteen months ago, and she decided to leave the money to the Royal Berkshire hospital in her will, after having spent a month in the hospital before she died. She asked that it was used to endow a ward or purchase a scanner. The hospital have said they're thrilled to be able to do just that.
While the rest of the country is all stressed and upset about old people and how they can afford their end-of-life care (an enormous problem for so many families), isn't it wonderful to hear about a woman who was in the unique position of being able to think of others at the end of her life?
But, contrary to how the picture editors, with their crass mock-up photos, claim she would now look, I reckon she would most certainly NOT look lined, haggard, pale and old. We would all be gazing at her and simply thinking "how fantastic does she look!" without automatically pondering her age - a bit like the way we perceive Sophia Loren!
Yet the picture editors see 50 as "old". Being fifty still means "past your prime". It's a stupid, lazy and ignorant attitude yet they cling to their prejudices. Why?
Oh, and by the way, isn't Kate doing well?
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Hi! I’m Anne Diamond and on weekday mornings you can find me on BBC Radio Berkshire (10 - 1). Even if you don’t live in and around Berkshire, and you know me from my TV and writing, you can always read what I’m doing here or listen online. Welcome! For the latest updates across BBC blogs,
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