FINE, thank you very much. And grateful for the many Get Well wishes I received, not least a welcome clutch from Northern Echo readers.

To those who had hoped they had seen the back of me, if only journalistically, I acknowledge their kindness in not publicly saying so. Alas, I can't promise to irritate - or bore - them less in future.

But, on the resumption of this column after its seven-week hiatus, I can perhaps be of use to anyone who has read thus far. Should you ever experience a chest pain which lasts for more than a few minutes, call an ambulance - THEN phone for the doctor.

This is official advice from the British Heart Association. Delay in dealing with a heart attack, which is what chest pain often indicates, though it can also be angina, not only carries the risk of more serious attack but can limit the effectiveness of treatment for the original attack.

When I suffered chest pain on the first weekend in June, I put up with it. It had disappeared when I went to the doctor's on Monday. Nevertheless, my declared intention of simply taking things easy for a week or two didn't go down too well. After sounding my chest, my GP popped an aspirin in my mouth, called an ambulance and arranged an immediate ECG, which was faxed to Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital, where I was admitted within the hour.

This impressive response and attention was maintained throughout my 11-day stay in the JC hospital, where a heart attack was confirmed and tubes were inserted in a couple of constricted arteries. While there I read that Britain's hospitals were 12th in a European league table. Fellow JC patients and I found it hard to imagine how the standard of care we received in the Coronary Care Unit and on Ward 29 could be surpassed anywhere. The staff truly deserve medals.

But why did I have the attack? A non-smoker, I take regular exercise, eat good food and am not overweight. My blood pressure and cholesterol levels are within the recommended limits.

I was just unlucky. But also very foolish. For here's another tip. Forget the adage "you're only as old as you feel". Aged 67, I don't feel any different from when I was 37. Thanks to the James Cook and a wonderful wife, even after the operation I still feel 37. But of course I'm not. I learned this the hard way, when the heart attack followed a week in which I did more work, mental and physical, culminating in an evening keeping wicket, than is sensible for a man of my age.

According to the BHF literature, I could now be suffering depression and anxiety. Instead I feel relieved to have got away with it. True, I have a sense of a little cloud hovering that was not there before. And yet, when I think about it, I realise that the cloud was there before, has always been there, and in fact, has been growing perceptibly of late, as it must for all whose future cannot be as long as their past.

Sod the cloud. Life remains to be lived. And, reining myself in just a little here and there, I intend to continue living it.