Dad's back home. He flew in to Gatwick yesterday, and was brought back to the house by ambulance, arriving yesterday afternoon. I wasn't able to be there when he arrived - I was delivering the girls back to their mother - but I managed to get back not long afterwards.

Dad's fine mentally, but very frail physically. He's been almost totally immobile for two weeks, and eating no solid foods, so what muscle tone he had is now totally gone. He can't do stairs unassisted at the moment, and I can't see him making it out of the house for some time to come. The GP will be visiting later, so hopefully he'll be getting some good dietary and exercise advice, and some good drugs - he's still in a lot of pain.

He was advised at one point that he shouldn't drink tea! That's a cruel blow to an Englishman, but thankfully he's now been told that tea is fine as long as it's not too hot.

One surprise was that he's got two badly broken fingers on his left hand. Compared to the other problems that he's been having, this is pretty trivial stuff, but Dad will be upset if he's no longer able to play the bass. :-(