Over the past two weeks many people have enquired about how Matt's treatment is progressing. I would like to thank everybody for their caring concern. I have been a bit hesitant with my response to questions recently as I have not known the answers but, as of today I am now in a position to announce how things have gone.

For the past two weeks, as a family we have been a kind of limbo-land of not knowing and this has been a far more difficult time than when the regular treatment was taking place - which we kind of got used to - it became a regular part of our schedule. Matt himself has taken the whole of the past eight months in his stride and yesterday, spent the day at Alton Towers but for me personally, the past week has been depressing. Mentally, I have felt the same as I did when we had the first frightening diagnosis.

Matt had his last chemotherapy treatment in Cheltenham on Tuesday, 6th March and on the following Monday, I took him to Hereford for his three monthly CAT scan. Awaiting the result has been hard but today, Tuesday, 20th March, Bernice and I went with Matt to Cheltenham to hear the outcome. The scan results looked exactly the same as his last one. When we were first told this it worried me but apparently this is very good news as it means that the chemo has finished breaking down the live cancer and all that remains is benign, hard tissue.

To all intents and purposes we can now say that the problem is in remission. However, further tests still need to take place over the coming months and a full body PET scan has been arranged to make sure that there is no active disease elsewhere. We will have the results of this on 3rd May but from conversation with the doctor this morning, we are confident that all is well.

Andy Margrett played the Prince of Wales on Saturday and I am absolutely in no doubt that every body there thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Prior to the event, on the 'What's On' page, I used the only photo of Andy that I could find at the time and said, 'Not with Tina'. That did not turn out to be entirely the case though.

Andy is a fantastic guitarist and Tina did in fact perform two songs with him on Saturday, 'Summer of '69' and 'Living on a Prayer'. Living on a Prayer was the last song of the evening and the beer had kicked in by then, so everybody enjoyed it anyway but I have to say, she sang Summer of '69 early in the evening and did so quite brilliantly. Must be something to do with the song being one of her favourite numbers.

Chris Mailey helped Andy out with an amusing performance of 'Duelling Banjos', as can be seen in the second photo. Paul Randell sang 'Born to be Wild' and 'Whiskey in the Jar'. Paul made a great job of Born to be Wild - especially as his own band have not played that song since the 'Silverfish' days in the '90s.

Sharon Waldis, the 40th Birthday Girl sang the song, 'Angel' very nicely and Jay, the man of the night sang the Pink Floyd song, 'Comfortably Numb'. The Floyd are my absolute favourite band of all time. I have liked them since their first singles 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' with the late and great Syd Barrett back in 1960s.

Continued . . .

Jay's Tee shirt shows his true allegiance to English rugby following Saturday's performance!

Next week at the Prince, Eclipse will be your band for the night. I have a prior engagement at the Mayor's Ball but I will definitely try to get along to the end of the show. I went to Jay and Amanda's 'Suits and Posh Frocks' party on New Year's Eve in jeans, tee shirt and a beany hat so I'll make up for it by turning up to the Eclipse gig in a suit.

The Zebras are at the Barrel Inn on Saturday and Tina will cover the end of that one for next week's news.

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