Michael Norton - an Extraordinary Boy. Introduction

Introduction

The trouble with losing a child is that it simply isn't in the natural order of things. In fact, it is so far removed from the natural order of things that everything else in one's life suddenly goes through a seismic shift as well. All the patterns and conventions of everyday life become meaningless and irrelevant as grief picks you up and shakes you by the neck as efficiently as any earthquake. However the death occurs, whether suddenly or at the end of a long illness, that first shock ripples through your being and rattles all the nerve endings. Then, just as you think the dust is settling, just a little bit, the aftershocks begin. And they do even more damage, shattering your defences and your confidence and eating away at your ability to see beyond anything but the fact that the bedroom is empty, the possessions undisturbed - and the silence is permanent.

For a mother, the mental anguish of losing her baby (at whatever age) is exacerbated both by the physical pain of his absence and by the guilt of not being able to prevent it. To an onlooker, this sense of guilt is often totally inexplicable, and many friends will try to ease a mother's burden by pointing out the fact that everything she could have done, was done. But that is to negate the very basis of human life: that a mother's job is to nurture her child as he grows and protect him from all misadventure. Any woman losing a child is going to feel some sense of failure at the most basic of levels and to try to dismiss that to fail to acknowledge a very real distress.

I know. For my child is dead. As I write this, Michael has been apart from me for 26 days. He died, aged 14 years, 9 1/2 months, of a brain tumour, which he had been fighting for nearly a year, always aware that it was a battle which he was unlikely to win. His family and friends have watched with pride, admiration and, in the end, deep distress as he moved through the year, adjusting to his changing circumstances but never once retreating from anything he wanted to do. Over the last weeks of his life, and since his death, I have been trying to make some sense of it all. I don't suppose I ever will, in truth, but I know that in order to try, I need to tell Michael's story. Over the last year of his life, we maintained a website so that his friends, and THEIR friends, could see how he was coping and understand what he was having to experience in dealing with cancer. Michael kept his own diary for part of that time, and I, too, kept some private notes and a scrapbook in the hope that it would help me if I ever had to face losing him.

Now I am facing that loss. Just as Michael's father is, and just as his 11 year old brother is, too. We all have to come to terms with it in the best way that we can. For me, that way is to write this book. Although the experiences I am writing about are essentially family experiences, I am writing from my own point of view, as Michael's mother. In a way, this is the last thing I can ever do for him and I owe it to him to tell him how I have felt it; after all, his story is in so many ways my story too. Although he and I were so often at odds over the years (which mother and elder child are not?!) the one great blessing which has come out of his last illness is the fact that he and I were able to spend so much time together. During that time we became very close, very forgiving each of the other and very prepared to be honest and open in a way which few parents of adolescent children are lucky enough to experience. If I have one abiding personal memory of the end of Michael's life, it will be of the night, 36 hours before he died, when I had half-helped, half-carried him back from the bathroom and propped him beside his bed in the hospital while I tried to explain to him how to sit down on it. As I steadied myself against the bed so that I could try to lower him gently down, knowing that Michael was blind, unable to stand unaided, as far as I knew no longer able to know who I was or to talk, suddenly a pair of arms shot round my neck and hugged me for all I was worth. There were no words, nor were they necessary. I hugged him back and for those 20 or 30 seconds, he and I were at total peace.

Michael, this book is for you. I hope you feel that I have done you justice.

With love.

AN EXTRAORDINARY BOY PART ONE: - Michael Norton: the 'Friday afternoon' baby, constructed from leftover parts.....

Chapter One

Michael Daniel Robert Norton decided to arrive amongst us on a Monday morning in February, in the snow. To those people who don't live in a busy commuter belt, that might lack significance. To those who do, the fraught nature of a trip along an approach road to junction 11 of the M25 at 8am on a Monday will be only too easy to understand. The pregnancy had not been particularly easy - I had lost Michael's twin early on, and now he was over two weeks' late in being born - so I had decided that a long and difficult labour was probably on the agenda and hadn't bothered to rush too quickly into the maternity unit.

However, I had not banked on Graham deciding to feed the cat, make himself a four-course breakfast, prepare several rounds of sandwiches, collect a copy of 'The Times' and make various other preparations as if for a siege before leaving the house. Hence by the time we were stuck in the traffic jam along the A320 I was being forced to lie about the frequency of contractions rather than have both of us panicking uncontrollably. By the time we arrived in hospital, Michael had seemingly gone off the idea of being born at all, and eventually was delivered by forceps at 12.27pm, weighing 7lbs 13oz, and was rushed away as he seemed reluctant at first to breathe. After a few minutes, the midwife returned him to me, with the prophetic words, ' This one's been here before……….. look at the way he's watching everything.' 

I had never seen any young babies before, much less a brand new one, and as I took this grave little stranger into my arms I was awe-struck and strangely moved by the way in which he looked up at me. He and I surveyed each other carefully; he was obviously studying my face intently, recognising my voice but quite clearly uncertain as to whether or not I was going to be up to the job of being his mother. That was look I came to recognise well - and so did many others. It was never a case of being criticised, or even of not being good enough; but you always knew when Michael looked at you with that very direct gaze that he KNEW the answer to the unspoken question.

Unfortunately, in those early days, the answer was painfully obvious to both of us. Being a total novice I didn't know anything about babies at all. In 1986 it was the norm for mothers to stay in hospital for five days - and thank heaven I did, for if I had gone home in the first couple of days I doubt Michael would have survived until the weekend, never mind to age 14! It was only when Christopher was born, exactly three years later, that I realised that in those first couple of weeks I had NEVER picked Michael up to cuddle him; it never occurred to me that I could. I picked him up to feed him or to change him, and then I put him down again. I often wonder if that was one of the reasons why he was such an un-tactile child. Furthermore, I am rather ashamed to confess that I seriously underfed him in those early days. He was bottle-fed and because in the first 48 hours he only took 2 or 3 ounces from each bottle, I thought that was all he should be taking. Demand feeding hadn't permeated through to my brain, for some reason. After he screamed his way through day 3, the sister picked him up, swaddled him tightly, gave him 6 ounces of milk, winded him and he settled straight off to sleep. 'That's more like it!' she said. 'I wonder what was wrong with him?'

I didn't dare confess.

In any case, all of that became academic very quickly as Michael gave us the first of what would turn out to be a lifetime of medical emergencies. On Saturday, February 22^nd, aged five days, he was getting ready to be discharged. I had started to get him dressed in his own clothes for the first time and had the carry-cot all ready for the Big Trip Home. The registrar came in to assess him for discharge and performed all the usual tests. She was listening to his heart, and I wasn't paying too much attention, when her face suddenly changed. Then came the words that no mother wants to hear but which we became all too familiar with:

'I think there's something wrong here.'

Michael was wrapped up in a warm blanket, a pram appeared from somewhere and he was pushed straight across to the x-ray department for some scans and tests on his heart. I was so shocked and distraught I didn't go with him; strange to look back on that now, but I was busy shouting down the phone to Graham to come as quickly as possible. By the time Michael was brought back to me on the ward, the duty paediatric consultant had arrived at the hospital and come to see us. This was the first time we met Dr. Richard Newton, a wonderful doctor whom Michael always liked immensely, and for whom I frequently felt so sorry as over Michael's short life he battled to make sense of the many and various - and rare - illnesses which befell him.

Michael was taken off to have an ECG because it was decided that he was very 'breathy'. I hadn't noticed - as I say, I'd never been near a tiny baby before so in all honesty I probably wouldn't have thought anything he did to be particularly remarkable. The ECG machine could not be persuaded into life that afternoon, and after another overnight stay and much discussion we were allowed to take Michael home on Sunday afternoon, on the understanding that we would be back on Monday for the ECG. We drove home through the snow and as I carried Michael into the house it dawned on me again what a miracle the whole thing is; that two of us  - a couple - went into the delivery room and three of us - a family - walked out. And of course that process was to be cruelly reversed in another hospital room nearly 15 years later.

Michael's tests on Monday showed no abnormality in the actual chambers of the heart, so the general opinion was that this was a straightforward murmur of a sort that generally cleared up on its own as the child grew. Certainly Michael had regained his birthweight within the first ten days and seemed to be doing quite well. This was to be a familiar pattern throughout Michael's life; the initial scare, the feeling that everything was under control - and then Michael's own personal spin on the situation which always sent it belly-up when we least expected it.

In this case, although we were concerned, we were reasonably comfortable even though another ECG in early March still didn't establish what was happening, and we simply got on with the job of enjoying our baby. We had to set the alarm clock to wake him up for feeds at night or else he would sleep through. Maybe I should have been a bit surprised at that, but once again, I assumed it was fairly normal behaviour and got used to staggering out of bed in the small hours to force Michael awake to be fed. He was still putting on weight, and he had started to smile from 4 weeks old and generally appeared to me to be a normal baby.

Another echogram towards the end of March raised some more concerns; the murmur was still there but 'not making a distinctive murmur sound' - and by now the opinion was that whatever and wherever the hole was, it was also affecting Michael's lungs. By two weeks later, he had stopped gaining weight and we were asked to bring him back to St Peter's a few days later for a further echogram. This time they located the hole - it was identified as a 'patent ductus arteriosus '. This is a little valve which is open during pregnancy to allow the blood to circulate around the baby bypassing the lungs, as obviously the baby is taking in oxygen from the mother and not from the air. It is supposed to close at the time of birth and as the baby takes its first breath. Frequently it doesn't, but usually the hole will gradually seal itself as the child grows. In Michael's case the hole was still open, and there was a lot of excess blood in the left ventricle. Dr Newton was of the view that Michael would need an operation at some stage to close the hole, and he told us that he would refer Michael to the Brompton Hospital.

Now we did begin to worry and to watch Michael like a hawk. Of course, from my lofty position as an ignoramus, I wasn't really certain what I was looking FOR exactly, but I was determined not to miss anything. We began to worry if he cried in case it put more of a strain on his heart and lungs. We worried if he DIDN'T cry in case it was significant in some way. Meanwhile the recipient of all this attention was continuing to be more aware, to make more sounds and to smile and even laugh.

A week after the last echogram we had a phone call from the Brompton saying that they had had a cancellation for the next day, April 16^th, and would we take Michael up at 10am. Surprised but pleased, we went along and Michael had another set of X-rays, ECGs and other tests. Then he was taken upstairs to a much larger echo machine. While the results were being discussed, we sat outside in the corridor feeding Michael. He was about halfway through a bottle when the consultant came out; 'I'm sorry, Mr and Mrs Norton', he said, ' but you will have to stop feeding Michael straight away. The ductus is so large that Michael is in heart failure, and we need to operate on him right away. Fortunately there is a space on the end of today's operating list……'

I think I rather lost track after that and didn't really get the gist of much else that was said. Now I am much better at it; I listen hard and then go to pieces later. But this was one of the first times I had heard bad news and it was all too much. For the surgical team, of course, this was a routine operation, although not without risks. I remember meeting the surgeon, a huge man with hands to match, and thinking to myself that I couldn't envisage how a man with hands that size could operate on a baby's heart - which wouldn't have been much bigger than a large walnut. Fine for playing Liszt, though, I decided.

Graham and I were horrified that things should take such a sudden and unexpected turn. Graham asked what the success rate of this operation was. 'About 80%,' replied the surgeon. This meant that one in five babies could die from it. Neither of us liked the sound of that, so we asked what would happen if we refused to give consent. ' Then I'm very afraid that Michael will die quite soon,' came the gentle but firm reply. So we signed the form.

Michael was carried down to the theatre at 6pm by a hospital porter - too small for a trolley - and the nurse accompanying them suddenly ran back along the corridor and asked if he had been christened. 'Er….no,' I said, bewildered. She wrote down his chosen names carefully on the back of her hand in biro as she dashed off again. Graham and I wandered into the hospital chapel and sat there for a while, making plea bargains with God. I suppose that over the next few years, God must have wondered why we kept on doing it - after all, there were no hard promises coming forth from His direction. Funnily enough, at that stage, neither of us was confirmed, although I had always been a regular churchgoer. Graham hadn't even been christened; for both of us Confirmation would come in the next few years. Meanwhile, this was the first of many hospital chapels to receive visits from us.

The next 36 hours in Intensive Care were as traumatic as one might expect, although from a medical point of view Michael was making good progress. Once down on the babies' ward, we quickly made friendships with other parents in the same situation. I sometimes think that it is only another parent in that state at that time that really understands how you feel. And of course there is ALWAYS a child worse off than your own; a good perspective for anyone.

Michael recovered quickly and was back home five days later. This seemed incredible to me; and in fact we were told that babies take a day for every week an adult needs to get over this sort of operation. Michael had a pretty ugly scar, which meant he needed careful handling. We assumed the scar would fade, but it never really did; even when he died, it still reached halfway across his back, just as it did when he was eight weeks old. This scar was to prove a feature for him. When he was at the Royal Grammar School, some twelve years later, an impressionable, nay gullible, young boy asked Michael how he had got it. 'Well,' said Michael, 'I was surfing off the coast of Florida and there was this shark…….'. One of the benefits of being so small and apparently frail, as well as having a fearsome intellect and a reputation for being a 'straight kind of guy' , is that people tend to believe you. Michael built quite a reputation on this for a little while.

Once we were discharged from the Brompton, delayed shock set in, I think. Looking back, there I was, aged 27, having always done well at my grammar school by dint of working hard. I went off to University where I didn't work quite so hard, but throughout my life it had always been the case that if I wanted to know about something, I looked it up in books and then applied the knowledge. That was the case with pregnancy, more or less. I knew how I should look after myself and I knew the theories on babycare. So I couldn't understand how I had managed to 'fail' at producing a healthy baby, particularly when you only had to turn on the television or open a newspaper to see someone who patently had NOT looked after their child and yet the infant appeared to be thriving. I just didn't understand it, and I soon came to the conclusion that somewhere along the line I must have done something wrong.

Before I could think it through logically, though, we were already into our second health crisis. Michael had come home from the Brompton on Monday evening. By Tuesday night he was being very sick and acute diarrhoea. Late that night I phoned the Brompton to ask whether it could have anything to do with all the drugs which he had been given whilst there. The answer was quite definite: no. By the next afternoon, we were back in St Peter's, trying to correct the dehydration, which was not helped by the fact that Michael had lost a great deal of weight in the previous couple of weeks. Ironically, he was in St Peter's longer than he had been in the Brompton for his heart surgery. By the time he came home again, we all felt as though we had been through a war. Nevertheless, as far as we were concerned, it had been a traumatic start but he had recovered, and was not expected to have any further problems. Certainly, he continued to achieve all his developmental milestones.

In July, he was christened during the morning service at St Nicholas' Church in Pyrford. It was a very special service; the sermon focussed on the meaning of Michael's name - 'chosen by God' - and the relevance of that, given how ill he had been. It was around this time that the vicar had come to see me to talk about Michael and to bless him. When I said how distressed I had been that my child had been so ill, he made the comment that Michael wasn't mine, he belonged to God and I was in fact taking care of him - he was on loan, so to speak. I have often returned to that conversation in the light of future events and thought that maybe there was a grain of truth in it. I discussed it with Michael himself, on one occasion. Michael said to me,'Well, actually I don't want to belong to OR be loaned by anyone. I will choose when I go back to God, if I possibly can.' And what prophetic words they turned out to be. St Nicholas came to play an important part in our lives; after Christopher was born in 1989 I became Director of Music to the Parish for five years. My sister was married there, my mother's ashes were interred there, and now Michael himself lies there, under a Christmas tree on the hillside, just as he had always wanted ( give or take the odd mausoleum…….. of which more anon).

By the Autumn, it was certainly noticeable that Michael wasn't growing very much. In fact, he was no bigger at one year than he had been at six months - but he was walking, starting to talk and extremely lively, so again, we were never too worried. We had a lovely Christmas with him, as all first Christmases are, but by mid-January we were back in hospital again, this time with a high temperature and breathing difficulties. Nobody was certain what was wrong; his blood counts were low, and he had a few small patches on his lung, but otherwise there was nothing much to go on. He came home for a couple of days, but by January 28^th was back in hospital. This time the diagnosis was pneumococcal osteomyelitis ( a severe bone infection which can be extremely serious if left untreated); he had been limping and his temperature was very high. Plenty of intravenous antibiotics sorted the problem out eventually, and he was home in time for his first birthday on February 17^th …… and a bout of chickenpox to go with it. I still thought we had simply been unlucky; even so, I still found the sight of this little chap in hospital so very distressing. Michael, though, never showed any signs of being unhappy. In the evenings, we would wait at the corner of the ward watching him as he fell asleep, quite unperturbed by us not being there, before going home for the night. He was always - and he remained - totally co-operative with the nursing staff throughout all the various procedures he had to endure. Meanwhile, in his brain he was planning his own revenge - by May we were back in the hospital again. This time, he was refusing to eat. Our GP thought the osteomyelitis had returned. Dr Newton thought, probably correctly, that  Michael had simply worked out that food was the one area of his life that he had control over. Eventually he 'agreed' to eat a little bit - and then I realised that he would often not swallow it. He would 'store' it in his cheeks like a hamster, and when he had his after lunch nap I would have to empty out the food from his face!

Michael hated food throughout his life. He didn't enjoy taking time out from whatever project he was engrossed in at the time to come to the table, nor did he find anything pleasurable in the social side of meals, either at home or in restaurants. I still wonder if it dates back to his first few weeks before his heart surgery, when feeding made him so tired and breathless and simply wasn't a good experience for him. Throughout his life, his diet was never wider than fish in breadcrumbs, party-size sausage rolls, chicken nuggets, yorkshire puddings, omelettes and roast potatoes. And mustard, bizarrely. I tried EVERYTHING. Every ploy known to mothers. I left food around the house, I withheld treats, I bribed him ( hopeless, that one) and we saw doctors, psychologists, homeopaths and every other type of -ologist and -path barring psychopath. We didn't need one of those. That was me after several years of this. And yes, I have frequently asked myself whether this contributed to his cancer. But to be honest, I see little point in beating myself with that particular stick now; I had all that out with Michael and he simply ignored it. He said he hated most food and that was an end to it, as far as he was concerned. Fortunately, by way of relief, God sent us Christopher who was different from Michael in every way possible, not least in his capacity to eat for Europe, should it ever become an inter-continental sport. The spicier, the better. So I must have done something right SOMEWHERE along the line. One of the most bizarre aspects of Michael's treatment for cancer was seeing him eat and eat whilst on steroids. He stuffed biscuits and chocolates and pizza incessantly - it even amused him. I remember one evening where he had eaten so much he lay flat on his back on the settee, groaning that his stomach felt near to exploding. He'd never before felt full!

Chapter 2

By the time Christopher was born, 5 days after his big brother's 3^rd birthday in February 1989, Michael was quite clearly displaying all the personality traits which would mark his older childhood - great intelligence, a sparky sense of humour and a huge interest in everything going on around him.

He was fascinated by the concept of a new baby in the house. " My mummy has a baby in her tummy" was a sentence he used as the ultimate put-down if he felt any other child had too much to say for himself. I was concerned that Michael had started playgroup just three or four weeks before the birth, but he took it all in his stride, rushing in with his Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox and appearing to make friends quite happily. I was more worried when he decided to rename himself 'Peter' at this point, and would write 'Peter' on all his paintings and other pieces of work. Unsurprisingly, not many of these arrived home in the early stages of his playschool career. Peter's mother, on the other hand, was probably overwhelmed by her son's artistic output.

Undoubtedly Michael felt pushed out in the first few days of Christopher's life. On the first night at home, Michael - who never woke in the night - came into our room on several occasions, turning up finally at 6.45 am. Graham told him it was FAR too early to be waking up - and then my mother, who was staying with us for a few days, found him kneeling at the end of his bed in tears. I got up and went into his room, and after a few stories cuddled up together in bed he cheered up. He was already starting to read at this point, he had a prolific book collection and was always keen to go to bed in the evenings because he would put a story tape on his cassette recorder and then sit, listening, while he leafed through his books. He would read to the baby from a very early stage, enjoying being the 'big brother' despite his very tiny stature.

It was also clear that he was extremely mature for his age, and two incidents stick out in my mind from his pre-school days. Graham was away working in Zurich for a few days so I was on my own in the house with the boys. Christopher awoke at 6am one morning for his feed, and when I came to change his nappy it turned into one of those experiences which requires all involved to have a total change of clothing. I switched on the teasmaid and went to our walk-in airing cupboard, not realising that Christopher was crawling along behind me. As I was in there, he stood himself against the door, which slammed shut. With no handle on the inside, I was stuck - and the teasmaid was about to fill the teapot with boiling water, making a noise which would attract Christopher's attention.

Being claustrophobic, I decided that panicking was an appropriate response at this point. I shouted loud enough to waken the dead - and Michael was impossible to waken. Fortunately, he wandered out onto the landing. Aged just 3, the following conversation took place:

" Mummy? Where are you?"

"In the airing cupboard……….."

"Is that sensible?"

"No. Now, Michael, I need you to let me out."

"I'm too SMALL, Mummy, I'll have to find something to climb on……"

Parents of toddlers will appreciate that, at this moment, most 3 year olds would have realised that this was a golden opportunity to eat chocolate/watch television/ draw on the walls in wax crayon or do anything else which is usually banned. I feared exactly that. But to my surprise, Michael found a stool and, somehow, managed to open the door. He was totally taken aback by the enormous hug he received.

"But Mummy," he said, "If I COULDN'T have done it I would have dialled 999 and told the policeman to come and get my Mummy out of the airing cupboard!"

Sang-froid as only Michael could show it.

On another occasion we were discussing aeroplanes. He had a fine collection of Airfix models, mostly built by his adoring grandfather. I told Michael I didn't like flying AT ALL. (Something to do with being the daughter of an air traffic controller, probably.) My son looked at me pityingly for a few minutes, before launching into a detailed - and, as I discovered later, not being too clued-up on these things - entirely accurate description of how an aeroplane gets off the ground.

This precociousness was not always beneficial. After his 3 1/2 year health check ( a kind of paediatric MOT ), Michael and I were referred to the Child Guidance Clinic. The doctor who had carried out the assessment had felt that Michael did not relate to other children in the same way as most toddlers, preferring to talk to adults. Too right! One session at the clinic told us what we had known all along - that Michael was far too keen on books and numbers to want to spend much time playing. And so it remained.

Chapter 3

Michael was still very small for his age when he started school, but the hospital was quite happy at this stage simply to monitor him a couple of times a year. He began at the local state primary school in January 1991, shortly before his fifth birthday. He started on a Monday morning, and on the Thursday of that week, January 10^th, I took Christopher with me on a visit to the Rector's wife. She and I were having coffee while Christopher played with her two year old twins. We discussed Michael's less than happy start, and I remember saying to her that we had always been told that once he'd made it to school, he would probably settle down healthwise and live to be 100.

Within ten minutes, her phone rang. I heard Shelagh say, 'Yes, that's right, she IS here………', and then she re-entered the room looking very pale.

'Michael has had some kind of accident in the playground,' she said. 'The ambulance is just leaving the school now.' I abandoned Christopher to her and ran for the car. Later on, I would have no idea where I had left him; I have no recollection of getting to the hospital at all, although I confess I recollect only too well reversing into a bollard outside A&E.

Michael was lying on a bed in Casualty, his headmistress sitting next to him, with his eyes tight shut. He had been sick, but when examined by a doctor was found to have no extraneous mark or bump and I was allowed to take him home. Graham arrived back at the house shortly afterwards, and we were both concerned that Michael didn't seem certain of who he was and was still being sick. I rang the hospital again. 'Give him Calpol for his headache and see what happens,' was the response. By the afternoon I was very unhappy about him and decided to call out the GP. He was a family friend and was able to see at once that Michael was far from well. His eyes were not reacting normally, nor were his reflexes. Within an hour we were back in hospital. This time Michael was x-rayed. The cause of his symptoms was now obvious; there was a long thin fracture line running from the top of his skull round the back of his head and edging into the temporal bone behind the left ear. Apparently, Michael had been outside at playtime and been with his friends on the 'wendy house' style climbing frame. He was on the top step of the ladder when we think he must his banged his forehead very hard. At that point he presumably passed out, since he went straight backwards off the ladder and managed to fall onto the back of his head without breaking his neck, suggesting he was very relaxed as he hit the ground.

The 'ground' in question was the playground - made of tarmac. Although all the equipment in borough council-run playgrounds in the local parks was set into soft surfaces at this point, in the schools this was not the case. Surrey County Council were of the opinion that a soft surface encouraged children to be over-confident, thus making them more prone to accidents which would then result in more serious types of injury. Good grief. We spent a lot of time trying to challenge that school of thought - to no avail.

Januaries never were very good for Michael.

He remained in hospital for several days. Serious head injuries take a long time to recover from, however, and have many side effects. Still, at least we were getting in some practice for the brain surgery to come later. His sleep pattern changed overnight. Always a good sleeper, he would never again find it easy to go to sleep at night and he woke early from this point until the time of his chemotherapy.

One of the benefits of the illness, however, was that he was rather fragile for going back to the rumbustious school playground, and for the rest of that half-term - his first school experience - he attended the Hospital Teaching Centre at St Peter's Hospital. This is for long-term sick children ( originally for orthopaedic cases when the Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital was still in existence) who are unable by virtue of their illness to attend mainstream school. We were very lucky that this facility existed; in most areas, a child in Michael's situation has to resort to home tuition for a couple of hours a week, which can be very isolating.

Michael loved it. He loved the individual attention but, even more, he loved the fact that, because of the mixed ages and abilities, he could take each subject as far as he was able. He never forgot it - and the one big benefit which cancer brought him was the ability to go back to the hospital school and meet friends there - and in a way he came full circle.

The skull fracture marked the beginning of another set of medical problems. It must be said right away that, despite having the most sophisticated of scans over the next ten years, there was never any proof that the accident was related to all that followed. Maybe Michael had a weak skull in the first place. He had a large haemangioma ( a collection of blood vessels, like a red birthmark or port - wine stain ) under his left ear and cheek, which wasn't really visible unless he was hot or angry. THEN it stood out! All these things might have played a part. Now we'll never know. But later that year ( in 1991) Michael became ill again. He had a very high temperature and his left ear - the whole ear - swelled to several times its normal size. This gave us a huge laugh at poor old Michael's expense since he looked like a cross between ET and an African elephant. Back into hospital he went; the diagnosis was pneumococcal cellulitis and mastoiditis  and, just as with the earlier ostomyelitis, the treatment was high doses of intravenous antibiotics. It was at this point that Michael became the needlephobe that the staff of the 30 hospitals he visited in his life will remember. Because he was so small and thin, it was never easy to find a good vein. Trying to inert a canula was always a trauma for all of us and I learned to dread it, pleading, cajoling, threatening and using all sorts of wholly inappropriate bribes to try to help things along. It never did.

On this first occasion, the cellulitis was brought under control pretty quickly. Yet again, we regarded it as an unfortunate one-off. Sadly that was not the case. Michael had several recurrences, each one spreading swifter than the last and each time involving more of his face. It happened about every 18 months - once on a choir tour to Poole ( Poole General Hospital ), once on holiday in France ( Draguignan Hospital ) and a couple of times at homes. The last time was the worst - for a while we feared he might lose the sight in his left eye, so serious was the swelling behind it.

He had tests at Great Ormond Street to see why he kept getting infections, but nothing ever came of it. I decided he was a 'Friday afternoon child' - constructed from cheap parts just before God finished work for the weekend.

Chapter 4

Of course, all of this simply states what was wrong with Michael but in no way illustrates all that was right.

By the age of 6 he was clearly far from happy at the local state school and we moved him to a prep school in Guildford which was also the Choir School for Guildford Cathedral Choir. We had taken him to an open day, and when he heard the Cathedral Choristers singing, he turned to me and said, ' I want to do that.' He had been playing the piano since he was 4, despite having tiny hands, but I always felt his heart wasn't really in it. I was proved right when he chose the cello. From the beginning it was clear that this was where he was meant to be. By the age of 11 he had passed Grade V on both cello and piano - he never fell below high distinction marks on the cello, nor did he rise above low merit marks on the piano! Undoubtedly one of the factors here was the strong relationship which he forged with his cello teacher, Annelies Scott. A wonderfully open young woman with a remarkable resemblance to the Vicar of Dibley and the same warm and welcoming smile, she inspired Michael, as she does most of her pupils, to great things. She always said that she only had to worry about the technical side, that the musical side was already there in spades. She was right in lots of ways, but her exuberant enthusiasm was a perfect foil to Michael's quiet nature and the result was wonderful.

In Michael's last two weeks, when he was in hospital, I put on a CD of the Bach cello suites. On one occasion he became distressed and said, 'No! Not that, please…..' On another occasion he smiled dreamily.

'I love that sound.'

'Michael, do you remember when you played this piece?'

'No! Did I play this instrument?'

'Yes, you did, Michael, you played it so beautifully…..'

'I remember something…… there was a lady…… she was lovely……… yes, I remember her……….' And he smiled, gently.

He passed his audition for the Cathedral Choir by singing 'Jingle Bells' in the school choir practice in September, 1993, and fell instantly in love with the whole thing. He was 7 when he joined, and the only probationer at that time. One consequence of his limited stature was obvious at once - he was too short to see over the choir stalls. It was a source of amusement to many of the congregation as the years went by when, first, his eyebrows appeared, followed several months later by the eyes, nose and finally, by the time he had been in the choir for several years, his mouth. He wasn't too easy to see by the time he left, either. Despite that, he was always treated with jocular kindness by the older boys. Andrew Millington, the organist, would say later that he could see Michael had something about him from his earliest days, and, in Andrew, Michael found someone else whose influence over his life would be considerable. After all, Michael spent nearly six years in the Choir - almost half his life - and without any shadow of a doubt it was the thing he felt most committed to apart from the cello.

He was totally in awe of everything and everyone, and from the first day became consumed with ambition to be a Head Chorister. He took it all extremely seriously and, although he had been going to Church all his life, found the High Church rituals fascinating. He became so used to strange things going on at the Altar that sometimes we were only aware after the event how much he took in his stride.

One evening after Michael had been singing at the Installation of the new Bishop of Guildford, we had brought him home late and put him to bed before going downstairs to watch the news. There, before our incredulous eyes, we heard all about the protest by 'Outrage' supporters, when several people had burst through the Sanctuary doors, chanting and shouting, before being removed by a number of people including both the vergers and some of the more eminent of the local constabulary who had thought they were simply having a pleasant evening out.

Graham and I looked at each other and made for the stairs. 'Michael,' we asked, 'Were there a lot of people in the Sanctuary shouting and waving banners this evening?' 'Yes,' said Michael, surprised to be asked, ' And lots of people running about for a while, too.'

'Didn't you think it was odd?'

'No, was it?'

The sang-froid again. Nothing EVER fazed Michael, really. I don't ever remember seeing him incandescent with joy or sorrow; certainly extremely proud and content, but never, ever 'jumping-about happy' such as Christopher ( or I!) might get. I truly think that, as the midwife had said, he'd 'seen it all before'.

He was surpliced in September 1994 after two terms' probation and took his place as a full chorister. While a probationer, he had studied all the basics of the trade with Geoffrey Morgan, the sub-organist, on Monday mornings whilst the rest of the choir rehearsed with Andrew, and therein lay the foundations of a respect for Geoffrey that lasted throughout his time in the Cathedral until his funeral. Michael always said that he learned most of his music theory in these lessons, as well as developing a deep love of the psalms and their chants.  It was no coincidence that Michael was to ask Geoffrey to play at his funeral.

'I know what music I want and I like the way Mr Morgan plays it,' was what he said.

Having said that, he knew only too well how much he owed to Andrew. He sang his first solo aged 10, and after that sang more and more of them. He had a very high, pure voice - not a big voice by any manner of means, but he was invariably reliable and always faultlessly in tune. Hearing that voice soaring above me in the Nave of Guildford Cathedral as he effortlessly hit one top C after another in the Allegri 'Miserere Mei' on Ash Wednesday, February 25^th 1998 - well, that is a memory etched in gold.

Being the littlest chorister brought its own set of dilemmas. Shortly after starting in the choir, he lost a double tooth. The Tooth Fairy obligingly swapped said tooth for some derisory amount - I forget the going rate at the time. Michael appeared for breakfast.

'Cor, Mummy!' he shrieked. 'Wait till I tell the other choristers about THIS!! The Tooth Fairy has been and left me this money!!'

I anguished all over my cereal. To maintain the innocence of childhood or to subject my beloved baby to the ridicule of lofty 9 - 13 year olds? Reader, I destroyed his innocence. I can still see his crestfallen little face now. On the bright side, of course, this honesty saved his father several pounds in the following couple of years! In truth, I suspect that particular bunch of boys would have been quite gentle about it. One of the biggest joys to Michael about the Choir was in being part of a team; of course, at a day school this was always going to be a less powerful element than Christopher was to encounter by boarding as a chorister later on, but nonetheless, to Michael, it was an important factor.

Some of Michael's own thoughts on the subject are recorded here. All the choristers at Guildford are sponsored, by which I mean their choristerships are paid for, either by an individual ( or group thereof ) or by an organisation. This isn't a cheap thing since the choristers in effect receive one term's remission from their school fees in return for the service they offer to the Cathedral. Michael was sponsored by the Friends of Cathedral Music, an organisation devoted to supporting and promoting the tradition of choral music on our Cathedrals. Their local representative asked Michael if he would like to write a short article on being a chorister for their newsletter, and this is the result. Christopher, once again feeling a bit left out, said, 'Can I write one about being a chorister's little brother?'  And so he did. Interesting to read Christopher's contribution when you think that less than three months later he had passed an audition to one of the top boarding school choral foundations in the country!

Academically, too, Michael was up there with the best. We had had a full assessment done by a child psychologist before changing schools - in fact it was at her suggestion that we moved him. Everyone was in agreement that the large classes at the local school did not help him; once we discovered that his IQ was well over 140, we realised that we needed to encourage him in all sorts of directions.

Having said that, honesty requires me to say right away that Michael always was a lazy toad! He always did the absolute minimum for homework - it was finished, invariably, but he never walked 'the extra mile' - or even the extra inch, come to that. When asked about it, at an early age, he said, 'But it's all in my head! I don't need to write it down as WELL!' Indeed, in his last illness, he was honest enough to say that one of the benefits was not having to flog his way through acres of homework. He died before he had to get to grips with any GCSE coursework - and he always knew that that would have been a huge source of contention between the two of us.

Still, in terms of raw intelligence, Michael was hard to beat. He sat the 11+ Entrance Examination to the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and was invited on the basis of the results of that, to sit the scholarship exam. Fortunately for him, it didn't involve any revision or learning; it consisted of verbal and non - verbal reasoning, various forms of IQ tests and such things as reconstructing models from apparently random shapes. This was all grist to Michael's mill. He had already been awarded a major music scholarship; now the two were rolled into one as Michael was made a King's Scholar. This was something of which we were all inordinately proud. Michael played on this pride shamelessly and somehow managed to wangle out of it a new computer for the family. 'After all,' he said, 'Just think how much money I have saved you on school fees!' And he was right. By the time he was Head Chorister, his choral scholarship and King's Scholarship together equalled his total school bill.

Not content with that, he also passed the 11+ exam for Eton College. This was all beyond the wildest dreams of a couple from a state grammar school and the local comprehensive. Even a chorister son at a prep school was a novelty to me. Eton College seemed way out of our league! Nonetheless, Michael's musical talents opened doors for him, and it was clear that he was going to be a strong candidate for a music scholarship to Eton at 13. He moved from his prep school to the RGS aged 11, in September 1997, where the Music Department was able to provide him with far more challenges, but at this stage we were still allowing for the possibility of him moving across to Eton at 13. The thought of making this decision taxed Graham and I greatly over the next two years, but Michael wasn't too troubled. By the time we had to make the final choice, Michael had decided that he simply did not want too board. And that was the end of it. The prospect of turning down Eton College seemed bizarre to me; but somehow these things have a habit of turning out for the best - and, as it transpired, thank heaven he stayed at RGS.

Chapter Five

In fact, one of the deciding factors in the education issue was Michael's health. Again.

1996 was an extraordinary year for our family in many ways. In January, my piano duet partner and I flew out to Tokyo to take part in the International Piano Duo Competition, where we won First Prize in the piano duet section. This was a huge event in my life, something which I felt I had been working towards for many, many years, and so I was thrilled when Michael and Christopher were bursting with pride on my return home….. until I realised that they were more interested to know what I had brought them back in the way of presents!

Then, in February, Christopher moved into the spotlight for a while by taking it upon himself to have a voice trial. I had made two assumptions:

1)             the boy had a voice like a duck

2)             he would wish to share this with the Guildford Choir, alongside his brother.

In fairness to me, this wasn't because I had actually heard Christopher, really, it just hadn't really occurred to me that he might want to do it particularly.

One evening, a week before Christopher's 7^th birthday, Graham came home with a copy of 'The Times'. He read Michael an article about the Choir of the Chapel of St George, at Windsor Castle. Michael wasn't overly interested but, to my surprise, Christopher asked when the Voice Trials were. Two weeks' time appeared to be the answer.

'But do you WANT to be a chorister?' Not an unreasonable question given the article he had written for the FCM magazine not that long before!

'Yes I do - but NOT with Michael. I want to go somewhere different.'

This presented all sorts of problems; for a start, he was at the Choir School for Guildford Cathedral, and there are strong protocols about anything which might be seen as 'poaching'. Secondly, neither Graham nor I had any desire to see our 'baby' boarding. Still, I felt I couldn't refuse him the chance. 'After all,' I reassured Graham, 'I don't think he can really sing!' Huh.

I selected a song which I knew he liked - and I am given to believe that not too many would-be choristers have offered 'Cabbages fluffy and Cauliflowers green' as their chosen song! - and set to work. We only had limited time. Then, to my utter amazement, on the Wednesday before the trial, Christopher suddenly said, 'I think I'll use my proper voice now………'

And that was when I found out he could sing.

He passed the voice trial. Graham and I then had our first major disagreement in fourteen years of marriage. Graham felt he couldn't allow a child to board; I felt he should be given this chance since he so obviously wanted to take it. In the end, Christopher said he wanted to look around the school again - after which he simply insisted.

Michael watched all of this with interest. He had never considered his brother might be gifted or self-motivated enough to take charge of his own life - especially at the tender age of seven! He began to look at Christopher in a new light - and, of course, once they were both choristers there was an endless source of conversation between them, most of which was of the 'my choir is loads better than your choir' variety.

When Christopher started his new school at Windsor Castle in September, 1996, Michael was at first quite devastated. Eventually he learned to enjoy the benefits of our undivided attention and would resent it rather when the 'cuckoo in the nest returned', as he put it! Against that, he disliked the focus that his brother's absence allowed us to put on his homework and cello practice. There was no doubt, too, that in many ways he was jealous of the opportunities which were open to Christopher as a member of a high-profile choir. Although his commitment to Guildford Cathedral and its Choir was total (it came before EVERYTHING else in his life ) he was undoubtedly envious when he saw his brother singing on a television broadcast with Jose Carreras, or at Prince Edward's wedding. It wasn't so much that he thought he had made the wrong decision himself, for as he said he had never wanted to board. But he appreciated what Christopher had, and in some ways wished he had that too. He always had a secret hope that the two choirs might sing together at a service or a concert. In the end, of course, they did - at his funeral.

So it was an interesting year for Michael, and in some ways a good one. At Easter, the Cathedral Choir went off for a two week tour of some of the southern states of America. They had a wonderful time, staying in hotels and with families. Michael was always lucky with host families, and on this occasion near Atlanta had a night out at an ice-hockey match, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Unusually for him, he achieved the whole tour without a single episode of illness, for which Andrew Millington was profoundly thankful, despite having roped in a choir mother who was also a GP to come along in case of disaster! Then, in August, we all flew out to Florida for the holiday of a lifetime before Christopher went away to school. We had a week with Mickey Mouse, a week in the blissful surroundings of Marco Island and a few days in the Keys. It was the most wonderful time, truly a holiday which we all looked back on with huge affection. The boys were in their element.

Christopher went off to St George's on the first Sunday of September. The house was a very quiet and unnatural place to be that night! I started a new job myself that week - as a peripatetic teacher at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford - as well as being in charge of the music at the local state primary school. Michael himself was just beginning his last year at prep school.

On Monday September 16^th, I had a telephone call to say that Michael had been taken ill on the games field and was in the school sick room feeling very dizzy and unwell, with an earache. I brought him home; he certainly looked poorly, but there were none of the signs which always shouted 'cellulitis!' to me, so I simply assumed it was some kind of ear infection. He had no temperature and few symptoms beyond some dizziness. I left him in bed in the care of a friend while I went over to St George's to see Christopher, who only went up to Evensong in his cassock on Mondays and Tuesdays, so there were few opportunities to support him. When I returned home, he was still not well and I thought I would take him into the surgery if he still seemed distressed the next morning. Sure enough, the next morning he was still clearly in some distress - in fact, every time he moved at all, he was sick. By some act of Providence, a GP friend rang me very early that morning and, when I described his symptoms, was adamant that I ring the doctor straight away. Poor Michael - all he wanted to do was to lie flat on the floor. Within a couple of hours he was on his way back into hospital, where he was seen by another specialist doctor whom we had come to know very well, and whom we all, particularly Michael, liked enormously.

Patrick Chapman originally crossed our paths when Christopher was very young indeed and having one ear infection after another. I was always very impressed that Mr Chapman never reached automatically for the scalpel, but always looked to see what options were available ( in that instance, the six or so weeks that Christopher was on a mucus-reducing soya milk diet will remain with me as a low point. The SMELL of that stuff!!!!! ). Christopher did end up with his first set of grommets at the early age of 14 months, but at least it meant that we had someone we trusted by the time Michael had his first ENT problems. Glue ear in childhood is extremely common, so the fact that Michael had a myringotomy in August 1992 was nothing to worry about. The following April, in 1993, he had another operation in which four permanent molars were removed and braces fitted; these teeth had appeared to be rotten, possibly as a result of earlier illnesses, and it seemed best not to take any chances but to take them out. By September of that year, he was having more hearing problems and this time the 'glue' was drained from both ears and grommets inserted.

On this occasion I was severely put out. I had spent years and years taking Michael to hospitals, hanging around in thankless waiting rooms and buying innumerable cups of disgusting coffee. On this particular occasion, I had to be at a staff meeting at my school, and I delegated the job of taking Michael into hospital to Graham, as it was only a routine day case surgery. Imagine my wrath, therefore, when I discovered that on arrival at the hospital, they were asked if they could be followed by a photographer for the day! The hospital were making a book called 'Michael's Day in Hospital' with words and pictures that could be used to show other children what was involved in a day case operation. There was 'Michael and his Daddy check in', 'Michael and his Daddy meet the anaesthetist,' 'Michael and his Daddy go down to theatre', 'Michael and his Daddy talk to the surgeon', 'Michael and his Daddy recover after the operation' and, finally, 'Michael and his Daddy are escorted off the premises'. Michael and his Daddy got a bit of a frosty reception when Christopher and his Mummy heard all about it. I was, therefore, quietly amused on a return visit to hear that the most common response to this book was, 'Why can't I have my Daddy here with me too?!'

A few weeks after this operation, Michael woke up one morning and said one of his ears was leaking. Unusual, I thought. Not many seven year olds complain of leaky ears. He was very insistent that I did something, and on inspecting his pillow I had to admit that his ear was, indeed, leaking 'water' at a great rate. A trip to hospital proved inconclusive but there were a number of serious implications, not the least of which was the worry that this was cerebro-spinal fluid coming from somewhere in the brain. After the initial drastic leak, there was a small seepage of fluid for a few days, and then it simply stopped, as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun. Michael had x-rays of his head and mastoids at the local hospital, which didn't show anything obvious, and then we were sent to the Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon for a CT scan. No one knew what was going on. In the end, the conclusion everyone came to was that Michael might have some rare allergy to the grommets, and they were removed in yet another operation in October.

In retrospect, maybe it was a leak of inner - ear fluid. And the reason for thinking that was because of what was happening to Michael as he lay in hospital in September 1996. Patrick Chapman had never met a patient like Michael before. Over the eight years that he took care of him, he was always amazed at the variety of rare and inexplicable symptoms that Michael threw up. However, just like Richard Newton, he patiently and doggedly tried to get to the bottom of what was going on, because he felt - as Graham and I still feel - that somewhere underneath it all there must have been some connection between all these illnesses. On this occasion, though, he was quite clear about what had happened. Michael had had a perilymphic fistula. In his oval window, deep inside his ear, a rupture had occurred which had allowed fluid to escape from the labyrinth and out through the ear canal. As a result, he could not keep his balance but was suffering acutely from dizziness and sickness. The only way to stop the symptoms was to have an operation to repair the hole; this involved taking a little piece of fatty tissue from Michael's earlobe and patching the tiny hole.

This is not an easy nor a particularly pleasant operation; although he recovered well and quickly, the removing of the packing from Michael's ear was not a happy experience. I sat there as Mr Chapman pulled at yards and yards ( so it seemed! ) of bandages and Michael got more and more hot, bothered and distressed. Finally he had had enough. 'Why don't you just pull the rabbit out of there and be done with it!!' he shouted. And I have to say it did look rather like a magician's flourish. Afterwards, Michael and I laughed that his earlobe was probably the only place on his entire body where he had any fatty tissue at all!

Patrick Chapman told us that a perilymphic fistula is an uncommon occurrence in children. That, of course, surprised us not at all. By this stage in Michael's life we were very accustomed to the nature of his illnesses. In fact, I remember our GP saying to me on one occasion that whenever an article in the Lancet or BMJ featured something very extraordinary, the once-in-several-GP's-lifetime scenario, he'd shove it in a drawer and wait for Michael Norton to turn up with it! On the other hand, in 14 years I don't ever remember Michael catching a cough, cold or stomach bug. Common or garden illnesses passed him by altogether. If he couldn't get a trip in an ambulance or a visit to some esoteric tertiary hospital, it wasn't worth the bother, I suppose.

Nevertheless, as I say, Patrick Chapman felt that there must be some link between the skull fracture and this latest problem. This became of increasing importance as we realised that, as a result of the leak, Michael had lost all of the hearing in his left ear. We were unaware of this at first; it takes a while for the ear canal to recover from the trauma of having an 'entire magician's hankie collection' down it, as Michael put it. After that, the vagaries of the NHS audiology department are such that between November and January Michael had several appointments which were rearranged and then cancelled for various reasons. He was convinced something wasn't right, and by January we were all very unhappy. Finally, in exasperation, we contacted Patrick Chapman who arranged for us to see his private audiologist. We were devastated at the findings - Michael was totally deaf in his left ear with little or no prospect of anything being possible to reverse that. And of course, our worry was that the same thing might happen to the other ear. At least if the problem was related to the fracture line running into the left temporal bone, then hopefully it was restricted to one ear only. Even so, for a musician this was a terrible blow. Have you ever sat in a great Cathedral with your finger in one ear? Probably not, admittedly. Next time you go, try it. The distortion of noise is quite unbelievable, and I perfectly understand Michael's distress in the early days of coming to terms with it. He was certainly desperate to protect his 'good' ear. For a musician to lose any hearing is a fundamental trauma, and he was terrified of losing the other. If we ever went to a show or a noisy function, he would always take an earplug to protect his right ear, and going to discos or rock concerts simply wasn't something he was prepared to do. What would have happened as he got older, I don't know. It was the first time he ever expressed any feeling of unfairness or irritation with his health.

Patrick was, I think, just as upset as we were. He never missed an opportunity to talk to other experts in his field about Michael, and I know that Michael's notes went with him to at least one American conference so that he could ask questions of those who specialise in the minutiae of ENT. As a result of his diligence and that of Richard Newton, we visited Harley Street surgeons, the Royal Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, the Atkinson Morley, Great Ormond Street and Southampton General Hospitals. There was never any conclusive information to be had - but Michael was always more than aware of how much work was going on on his behalf.

His trust in Patrick Chapman was unquestioned. We had always assumed that the perilymphic repair would be a once and for all surgery which would put an end to all the problems, but 18 months later, whilst on another Cathedral Choir tour ( this time to Amsterdam) he became very ill with a strange infection-like illness in his left ear. He recovered after a while, but in August 1998 he became terribly ill, this time on holiday with us in the South of France. I always found it weird how he became ill away from home - one theory is that swimming every day might have been a contributory factor if there was already a tiny leak in his ear. I am not suggesting for a moment, of course, that for any Little Joe Ordinary there might be a problem! (I would use Christopher as an example here but I can't even begin to tell you about his medical excitement in the South of France in 1995!!!) .

Whatever the reason, Michael became so ill with cellulitis that we feared he would lose the sight of his left eye, so serious was the swelling behind it. Again, his ear was huge and swollen and the French doctors, who were wonderful, said we needed to take him home. We put him in the car at our rented gite near St Tropez at 4am one morning and drove non-stop, with him nearly unconscious in the back of the car, arriving back at the Royal Surrey County Hospital around fourteen hours later. Thank heaven for the Shuttle and its helpful staff. They looked in the back of the car and I think were so concerned about a corpse being driven on if they didn't act quickly that we were waved straight onto the train.

Patrick Chapman suspected another leak, but because of the location of the oval window there was no way of knowing for sure without performing another surgery. We knew Michael wasn't going to be up for that, and decided not to tell him until a few days beforehand. When he found out he was absolutely furious. Interestingly, though, he wasn't so cross with Patrick - he felt that if Mr Chapman said he needed another operation then he needed another operation. He was mad with us for not telling him and had no patience at all with the concept of the fact that we were trying to stop him getting into a state for days on end beforehand. He said it was HIS body and he had a right to know.

That was a lesson well learned by us.

There were plenty of people who advised us to have another opinion or to engage another surgeon. At one point when there was a vague hint that Michael might need to have preventative surgery on the other ear to avoid the same problem arising there, the same remarks arose. As far as Michael was concerned, they were non-starters. He said, 'It's about trust. I KNOW Mr Chapman is trying to do his best for me, so I'll take my chances with him, thank you.' I tell you, if you were a friend of Michael's you could lay claim to some fairly powerful loyalty

Chapter 6

In the summer of 1998, Michael achieved his long-held ambition and was appointed a Head Chorister in the Cathedral Choir. This was a source of great personal pride to him, and he took the position extremely seriously. During the summer holiday before his installation, though, he chalked up another first when he and the rest of the Choristers sang at the BBC Promenade Concerts. Michael was especially thrilled because he had a short interview in the BBC Music Magazine Proms Special Supplement. His name in print - and in a significant journal! Not that this was the first time. During the previous December, the Choir had sung at a Charity Carol Service in aid of Macmillan Cancer Relief at the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks. Amongst the eminent guests were Margaret Thatcher, Diana Rigg, Hugh Laurie and Helena Bonham -Carter, and Michael was looking forward to it because he was going to sing the opening solo. I think most of us would confess to the hairs on the back of our necks standing on end when we hear those first unaccompanied notes of a boy treble singing 'Once in Royal David's City……………' soaring through a darkened Cathedral. Michael had sung this on many occasions - the first at age 7, in our local Parish Church in Pyrford, just a couple of weeks before he joined the Cathedral Choir as a probationer. By 1997, he was very confident about it; he never went sharp or flat and the organist could always strike up for verse 2 without worrying that Michael had strayed into an entirely different key!

On this occasion, Michael sang beautifully, the service went off without a hitch, and he was getting out of his cassock to come home when a photographer from the 'Tatler' appeared, asking who had sung the solo. The resulting picture, of a laughing Michael unbuttoning his cassock, appeared in the magazine in the New Year, and we would never have known if Christopher's headmaster hadn't commented on it. After that, Michael came in for a lot of friendly ribaldry on the subject of his receiving hundreds of fan letters from well-connected young women. Rather to his disappointment, he didn't even get one.

Thus by the time he was installed and presented with his Head Chorister medal, on Sunday September 13^th, 1998, he was already a seasoned campaigner in terms of solos and musical responsibility. He was in his second year at the Royal Grammar School by now, and was coasting a little academically. Not because he was so far ahead of everyone else, but rather because he was lazy. There were a few lively evenings at home on the subject of homework, as I remember it. Nevertheless, we knew how much the choir meant to him, and we had a small post-Installation get-together with a few of his school friends and their parents. Of course, his non-musical friends probably thought he was quite mad to want to do it, but they always supported him and, as far as I am aware, no one ever made fun of him because of his voice. In fact, even his toughest and most macho friends seemed to have a rather grudging respect that he could do it so well. And as Michael said, he was earning some money from it. Much better than having to get up early for a paper round!!

I kept his programmes and service sheets from every special service in which he sang, such as All Soul's, Advent, Easter, Michaelmas plus all the occasional concerts at which the choir performed. In addition to this, we kept all the newspaper cuttings, school concert programmes, bravery certificates from hospital ( lots of those! ) and other memorabilia. I have a large box file for each year, and one of the pleasures and sorrows of researching this book has been looking over all Michael's achievements. I have done the same for Christopher, too. I cannot recommend it highly enough. A couple of years after Michael was born, my father presented me with a series of scrapbooks containing all my own press cuttings, together with all my certificates from music festivals and exam report sheets. It's my life story, I suppose, and I was always very determined that I should be the archivist for my children until such time as they could take it over for themselves. Michael was very keen on the idea; indeed, I have just picked up from the box marked '1998' details of services for Sunday, January 18^th. The setting for Evensong that day is Tippett's St John's Service, and there is a note in the margin written by Michael that says 'I did the solo in the Nunc Dimittis'. It is a very difficult piece of writing and I was never sure that Michael was singing the right notes. But later on that particular evening I remember very clearly that Andrew Millington phoned me at home to say how wonderfully he thought Michael had sung. Apparently it was all absolutely spot on. And here is another piece of paper - a review of that concert in the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, taken from the Internet:

'The concert……. opened with the traditional 'Once in Royal David's City', the first verse of which was sung by Michael Norton. His beautiful voice, heard in the stillness of the candlelit chapel, set the tone for the evening.'

I would never have remembered half of all of this. It doesn't bring Michael back - but it keeps a lot of him far more alive in our memories. We are so very lucky to have all this material; not many parents would have so much.

Meanwhile, at the RGS, Michael was getting into another of his loves - drama. In his first year, the school mounted a production of 'Oliver!'. Michael would have loved to have played Oliver and his tiny frame and treble voice well equipped him for the part. But there was no possibility of him fitting in rehearsals around choir practice, and he had to abandon the idea. Instead, he became involved in his year group's drama project. He was actually very good. I watched him in one sketch and I had been watching for several minutes before I realised that the old lady in a wig was my son. The other thing about that evening was that one person dropped out of the show with only two or three days to go. Michael learnt the words in half an hour. That was why I should have realised something was wrong when he was having problems learning some words in December 1999. Hindsight….. a wonderful thing. Michael looked forward with great enthusiasm to being able to get far more involved with drama once he left the choir; of course, that was not to be.

So his second year at the Grammar School was dominated by his Head Chorister commitments. Pulling out the Cathedral Newssheet for the day of his installation, I see that the anthem at that first service was 'Ubi Caritas' by Durufle. Interestingly, it would also be the last anthem he sang as Head Chorister. And, of course, it was the anthem he chose for his funeral. I wonder if he knew. Looking through this box, which is full of the service sheets from just his final year, I see how many solos he did sing. I don't remember it that way; another good reason for keeping all this paper. Of course, there are now so many poignant things about it. Here is the Evensong sheet from November 8^th, 1998, for a service attended by members of Marie Curie Cancer Care. One of the hymns is 'He who would true valour see' - one of Michael's funeral hymns. Who would have thought that, two years later, we would be using the services of these wonderful nurses? I always think it is just as well that we can't see into the future. But nice, too, to know that Michael was already repaying a debt he didn't even know he would owe.

Michael did all sorts of things that term; he made a demonstration radio advert for a student at Surrey University as part of his degree coursework. Although it was only a demo, it is wonderful quality, made in the Cathedral, and features Michael singing 'In the Bleak Midwinter' . Again, a precious possession for us now. That Christmas, BBC Southern Counties Radio recorded their Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at the Cathedral, and Michael was lucky enough to have a big solo which was heard all over the region on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day. He may not have lived for long but far more people heard him sing than have heard me play the piano, I should think!

Chapter 7

Looking back on 1999 now has a special poignancy; the last year in which Michael was well - at least for the most part. January was a special month because on the 16^th was my 40^th birthday.

I was 18 on a Sunday, and didn't have a party. I was 21 on a Wednesday, the first day of term at Royal Holloway College, where I was studying, and I had a few friends in my room for cake and champagne, but nothing wild or hedonistic. When Graham and I were married, on October 16^th, 1982, we had a relatively small affair, with around 50 people, and a lunchtime reception in the College Picture Gallery. No late-night disco or other extravagant largesse! On my 30^th birthday I was 8 months' pregnant with Christopher and I had a sedate evening at the local Toby Carvery for a few friends, as I was unable to do anything more than waddle about like Moby Dick's big sister. I remember working out as quite a small girl that my 40^th birthday was going to be on a Saturday, and after this series of quiet celebrations I had every intention of pushing the boat out. Graham was also going to be 40, in April, but we decided to have a weekend away for his birthday and to celebrate and blow away the post-Christmas cobwebs in style.

The boys were very excited about this, and we spent much of 1998 deciding how exactly we were going to organise things. We chose a venue and caterers, but Michael and Christopher were keen on a theme. As musicians, we thought we ought to think of something related and finally my love of jazz proved the key influence. We decided to hire a proper 1920's jazz band - the 'Black Bottom Stompers' - and once that had been settled the rest fell into place. The theme was black and white, and rather than insist on black tie we simply put 'Dress: Black and White' on the invitations. Which was how we came to have Morticia Adams, Elvis Presley, two Mint Humbugs and a giant panda present at the celebrations.

This hadn't really occurred to me as an option, having chosen a sensible black and white evening dress, but Graham fancied going as Dick Turpin ( Dick Turnip according to Christopher ), and the boys thought they ought to have a costume, too. So down we all trekked to the fancy dress shop. I spent half an hour trying to persuade the two of them to go as a pantomime cow, but there were such arguments as to would be the respective halves that I simply gave up and allowed them their own choices. Or rather I prayed they wouldn't choose anything too overtly offensive.

Christopher gave away a little of himself at this point by choosing a Fred Astaire outfit, complete with cane. He looked incredibly dapper and I was just congratulating myself on having such a suave and urbane child when he produced a little moustache and announced he was actually supposed to be Charlie Chaplin. He'd certainly perfected the walk.

Michael gave away even more of his own nature. I was amazed when he emerged from the changing room dressed as - a monk. At least, I thought he was a monk. He then turned round, and I saw he had a skull mask and was clutching a scythe. Yes, he came to his parents' fortieth birthday party dressed as the Grim Reaper. This has a totally different overtone now, of course, but at the time it was simply Michael showing his rather unsavoury sense of humour about the fact that he regarded Graham and I as unacceptably over the hill.

It was a wonderful party. Everyone who had ever meant anything to either of us was invited. There were people there whom we hadn't seen for years - and many of them hadn't seen the children since they were tiny, if at all. The boys had a terrific time, dancing, eating and being irritating - but they spoke to everyone there and that meant such a lot to us once Michael became ill, because ALL of our friends had met him and understood so much more clearly what we were going through.

The music was a real feature of the evening. Although I had hired a professional band, I had invited the Royal Grammar School Jazz Band to come and play for the first hour or so of the party - and they kicked up a storm. Once things got going, Andy Wilson, my colleague from school who actually ran the band, put Michael up on the stage to conduct. He was hopeless at it but it made a good video! Then, once dinner was finished, I had a surprise for Graham. He is a non-musician; he doesn't play any instrument but, like anyone married to a musician and with children who are choristers, has heard an awful lot of music in his time and learned to enjoy it. And in particular, he loved to hear Michael play. So Michael and I had worked on two cello pieces in secret, and once everyone was quiet, Michael started to play George Gershwin's 'Summertime'. He played beautifully; the video shows that, not only could you have heard a pin drop in that room, but also even the hardened jazz professionals came into the back of the room to listen. For a boy of twelve, playing to all his parents' friends and relations ( the most embarrassing of situations in which to play!) he showed extraordinary poise. Then he swung into 'I've Got Rhythm' and managed to play with huge panache - despite the spike of his cello (which was wedged into the floor to hold the instrument still) coming loose and sliding all over the place. He was always the consummate professional - the show goes on regardless!

I had given the job of Videomaster -in -Chief to my sister's husband, Robin. Both Graham and I had been under the impression that the boys had been behaving ( nearly ) impeccably all evening. Viewing the video the next day kicked that idea well and truly into touch. I watched in mounting horror the antics of my younger offspring, most of which do not bear repeating, but in some ways that video is now a perfect foil to the idea of the boys being in any way little angels or musical prodigies. At one point, Michael is behind the camera recording whilst Robin picks up Christopher by one arm and one leg and swings him round like a whirling dervish. Michael is laughing so much he can barely hold the camera still.

Everyone there looks back on that evening with affection - and not least because they remember seeing Michael at his most serious and musical and at his most beguiling and mischievous. There are plenty of shots of him inciting his brother into doing something unspeakable. And that was always the way they operated - the brain encouraging the brawn. Although I have to say that there was always plenty of brain on Christopher's side, too. They made a great pair when they moved into action together.

Graham's birthday provided some high drama of a different kind. Graham has always been a fan of speed, and my brother-in-law is a thousand times worse. Christopher, of course, was born to be wild. Michael was always like his mother - an inveterate, died-in-the-wool copper-bottomed coward. So I booked a session at the local go-karting circuit on April 5^th, Bank Holiday for the four of them. Because we went first thing in the morning, there were only the four of them plus another man and his son on the track. Thank goodness. Michael was very wary of the whole thing, but was persuaded into a  driver's all-in-one suit and a racing helmet. Christopher couldn't wait to get into the kart. Robin and Graham, naturally, were behaving like a pair of infants. They had the compulsory talk and set of instructions and they were off. As I said, Michael was always a coward and he set off at about 3 miles an hour. He would have been overtaken by milkfloats and babies with toddle trucks. This approach is infinitely more dangerous than driving with the flow of traffic, and I was absolutely petrified watching him, because neither his father nor his uncle showed any care or attention whatsoever. They were charging round the track in a way which made Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher look like Noddy and Big Ears out for a Sunday drive. After a few laps, though, Michael built up a little more confidence and, having started with a lap time of 86.57 seconds, finished with a personal best of 40.48 - a huge triumph for him, because he was always terrified of having any accident where he might bang his head again.

Christopher, meanwhile, was having his own personal trauma, having been forced off the track and into the tyres by either his uncle or his father - each subsequently blamed the other - and hurting both his neck and his knee, where it went into the steering wheel. Quite badly shaken and not a little upset, he had the sense to head back into the pit, where the marshal tried to flag him down. I say tried, because by the time he got to the pit, Christopher had apparently forgotten all the basic rules and, in his distress, accidentally accelerated hard instead of braking hard. The resultant surge forward meant he ran slap into the marshal, taking most of the skin off the poor man's shin and necessitating his removal to the first aid centre. Christopher was now overcome with shame, embarrassment and sheer terror that the marshal was going to thump him - and has never been go-karting again since!!

Looking back on these two occasions now reminds me that we were a very close family, despite Christopher being away at boarding school and Michael having such a heavy weekend programme of services and choir practices as well. Having two chorister children in separate choral foundations simply means you have to spend time apart, but we always made sure we sat down to Sunday lunch together. The bottom line for us has always been that we are a family - first and foremost. So when we won a free sitting at a very posh photographer's in a raffle at Christopher's school, we thought it would be a good chance to have the boys' picture taken together in their cassocks and surplices, with the added benefit of Michael being able to wear his Head Chorister's medal at the time. The photographer suggested that the boys took their instruments as well, so we turned up laden down with robes, music, spare clothes - enough for a fortnight's holiday, not an hour in a studio! We had the boys taken together and individually, in their robes with their instruments, and in casual clothes standing back to back. Then we had some taken of all four of us together, and one of Graham and I, at the boys' specific request, which I thought was rather touching of them. It was a fun afternoon. Getting the four of us in one frame was an art form - finally Christopher was put on his stomach at the front, with Michael kneeling over him, gritting his teeth as Christopher smiled merrily whilst kicking his brother out-of-shot with his heels at the same time!

The results were beautiful. I should have realised when we were taken into the 'viewing room' and offered a glass of wine that we were talking serious expense here, but in any case watching all the shots come up on the computer was a delight. The photographer had captured the essence of the boys perfectly, and we ended up spending literally hundreds of pounds. The main focus of this expense was an enormous picture of Michael and Christopher, each in cassock and surplice, standing side by side, Christopher with his violin under his arm and Michael holding his cello. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when Graham said how large he wanted it - but when we collected it I knew he had been right.

This photo hung in the living room of our house in West Byfleet and attracted a lot of derision and ribaldry from our friends since it looked as though it should be hanging in the entrance hall to Versailles. But I always had this feeling at the back of my mind that we needed to have a truly stunning picture of the boys together and I wasn't sorry we had had it done. Now, of course, it is a very poignant sight through the hall window of our new house. After all, it represents how Michael will always be to Graham and I - forever fourteen…….

Chapter Eight

Although Graham and I obviously could not both be at the Cathedral AND at the Chapel at the same time, one of us would always try to be at each place on Sunday mornings and evenings. The worst times were Christmasses and Easters. In 1999, though, Christopher understood that Michael had priority as it was his final year of singing, and both Graham and I were keen to be at his last Christmas and Easter services as Head Chorister. In fact it was necessary; as a day choir, there is no boarding school attached with Matron and catering department! So during the Christmas and Easter seasons in particular, it is the job of the senior chorister parents to provide teas before big concerts or in the break during the middle of long practices, and to serve mince pies and coffee ( and sherry!) on Christmas morning when the Cathedral refectory is shut. The mothers often joked that when the boys received their Head Chorister medals, their mothers should receive the Order of the Golden Teatowel - we spent a lot of time washing up!

Christopher was very good about it. He accepted that it was Michael's last year, and we promised him that we would all be over at the Chapel listening to him far more often in the year 2000. Of course, we weren't. But we were not to know that at the time. My family and friends were all very good about going to hear Christopher when they could - and in fact he wasn't really ever too worried if we were not there. Many of the boys who lived a long way away saw their parents far less frequently.

But despite all this, I still feel very much that we remained very close and always sought out each other's company. Neither of the boys was ever keen to have lots of friends home in the holidays, either. They seemed to prefer being together even though they fought all the time. Things were beginning to change in the last year, as Michael started to think about going out and meeting his friends in Guildford more often. But certainly in 1999 they seemed quite happy to be with us and at home. They knew we would always be there to support them in concerts, on Sports Days and in anything they did which parents could attend.

There was one big exception to this, and I regret it still. As I said, Graham and I decided to go away for his fortieth birthday, and we had used up our airmiles to go to Vienna in the middle of March. As a musician, I had always wanted to go and was really looking forward to it. Once it was all arranged and set in stone, we found out that the Royal Grammar School was giving its biennial concert that same weekend. The main item on the programme was Leonard Bernstein's 'Chichester Psalms, with Michael singing the treble solo. We debated long and hard and finally decided to go to Vienna anyway, making sure that we had plenty of friends set up with tape recorders. Michael said that he didn't mind, although I am sure he did. We rang him on Saturday morning from the middle of Vienna. He was still on a high - 'It was wonderful!! Everyone stamped their feet and cheered at the end and I had to come back onto the stage again!' I wished so much that we had been there - and the recording shows just how good Michael was at that time. The local paper said,

'The whole performance was lifted by the quality of the soloists. The RGS is lucky in having the Head Chorister of the Cathedral Choir, Michael Norton, amongst its pupils.'

It was one of the first times Michael had truly found a sense of the excitement of performing on stage - and it fuelled his appetite for more. I always wondered if, once he was grown up, he would tell anyone who asked that his parents 'never came to anything', since it has always seemed to me that one small oversight by parents is the only thing which children carry into adulthood as an abiding memory! In any case, we were back by the following Wednesday in time for the Cathedral Concert, given as part of the 1999 Guildford International Festival, in which Michael was once again a soloist, this time in one of Poulenc's Four Motets for a Penitential Season.

During the Easter holiday, Michael went on a residential music course at Gatton Park, in Surrey. He didn't have a great history of being away from home, and I also think that he was terribly prone to homesickness. Even when away on choir tours, he would often send a postcard, which would say he was missing us. Usually, of course, by the time he was due to come home, he was having such a good time he was reluctant to do so. This was no different. For the first 24 hours he was fairly miserable, I think, but after that he made friends with the other boys in his dormitory and by the time we went to hear the end of course concert, he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Most of the boys in his particular group of friends were much older - and considerably bigger - than he, but that never seemed to matter. He said he'd had a fantastic time and when could he go again? Oh, and his cello playing had improved, too.

This led to him wanting to join the Surrey County Youth Orchestra. You have to be around Grade 7 - 8 on your instrument to join, and Michael auditioned in the Summer Term of 1999. He passed, and was soon enjoying this new way of spending Friday nights. It was something he wasn't able to commit to fully in that term, because he was still singing in the Choir. Evensong in Guildford finished at around 6.15; Youth Orchestra in Woking began at 6.45 so he was rushing around a bit at first. But in September he had no other claims on his time, and he thoroughly enjoyed being a member of the cello section until he became ill.

From Easter until the end of Michael's time as a chorister was a whirl of concerts, and not just with the choir. The Royal Society of Church Music had one of its large 'Come and Sing!' Evenings in March, when anyone was welcome to turn up at the Cathedral and rehearse, then perform, Faure's Requiem with the Cathedral Organist conducting. Andrew Millington asked Michael if he would come along and perform the 'Pie Jesu', the most famous part of the work, which is performed by solo boy treble. As usual, not at all fazed by being the youngest performer by several decades, he stood up in the pulpit and sang beautifully. He repeated this with the Grammar School Choir and orchestra in Holy Trinity Church, Guildford, in June of that year. I remember that concert especially well, since the church is directly opposite the Three Pigeons pub, where there is a large television screen. On this particular hot, dry summer evening, England was playing a football match as part of some important tournament or other and the pub was buzzing. The boys had half a mind on what was going on elsewhere, it must be said, and as the soloists filed in I wondered what was going to happen. The baritone soloist was a maths teacher from the school with a magnificent voice, who stands about 6'3". Michael was standing next to him, looking about 3' 6". The whole thing went off wonderfully well. The last movement is a very quiet and gentle piece, 'In Paradisum', which finishes so terribly softly. Just as the last strains faded away, 'GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' erupted from over the road. Fortunately, to the less enlightened of the audience, it simply sounded like an unexpected ovation for the wonders of the music.

Meanwhile, over in Windsor, Christopher was preparing to sing at the wedding of HRH the Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones. Michael was not a little jealous of his brother at this point, and there were quite a lot of pointed remarks about 'conceit', 'jealousy', 'inability' and 'sour grapes' around the Sunday lunch table. He sat in front if the television highlights making caustic comments, but, of course, was secretly rather proud. If anyone else dared to criticise or mock what his little brother was up to, Michael was straight in like a terrier, defending Christopher from all-comers, even in his absence. It's odd how families work like that!

Graham and I took a weekend break in June and went to Paris with two  other couples - we are always amazed at how much time there is in a weekend which doesn't have services and choir practices in it! We had a wonderful time sight-seeing, eating, drinking and visiting museums, whilst Michael stayed with a chorister friend. Even something that straightforward would always involve Michael going away with an envelope full of his medical history and other details, long lists of phone numbers and copious instructions and reassurances to whomsoever he was staying with at the time!

Chapter Nine

By now we were moving towards July and all the usual summer term festivities. Michael won first prize in the school singing competition, and in the Intermediate Piano Competition, something which amused us both hugely, given the fact that whatever in life he was known for, it certainly was not playing the piano! He was also working towards his Grade 8 singing at this time, and we struggled to teach him a song in German, since he didn't speak the language at all. How he managed to learn all the words so quickly was a mystery to me, but he told me he did it by sound - just as he did with notes. He obviously made a good job of it, in any case - because when the mark sheet came out, he had been awarded 139 marks out of a possible 150. The examiner wrote, 'I enjoyed every moment of your singing, which always displayed commitment and warmth. Well done!'

It was a particularly busy time for the Cathedral Choir, because Andrew Millington, the Organist and Master of the Choristers, was himself leaving the Cathedral after sixteen years at Guildford to go to be Organist at Exeter Cathedral. Preparations were being made for his last Evensong on Sunday 11^th July, the service at which Michael would take his farewell also. Although Michael's voice wasn't anywhere near breaking, leaving at the end of Year 8 seemed the right thing to do. This was the usual time at which boys moved on, and after six years it was time to find some time for all the other things he was keen to try - drama, Youth Orchestra, hobbies - and maybe even some more thorough homework!

The last 'singing weekend' of July 1999 was a very busy one. As well as the usual commitments, Andrew's departure added an extra dimension to things as we all felt that it truly was the 'end of an era'.  Because all the choristers at Guildford are sponsored by individuals and organisations, it has always been the way of things that the choir hosts a 'Sponsors' Party' on the last Saturday afternoon of the choir term, following Choral Evensong. The parents join forces to provide the food for around 120 people, including all the choristers and their families, the Cathedral staff and the sponsors together with various friends of the choir. The Dean and the Master of the Choristers then present their annual report before the leaving boys and their parents provide a short musical entertainment.

This required a fair amount of careful organisation on the part of the senior chorister parents, as we set out food and plates, balanced tea urns and put out trestle tables. For once we were blessed with glorious weather and we were able to set up the tea tables outside. This left indoors to be set out in readiness for the entertainment after tea. The nature of this 'entertainment' was something which had been taxing me ever since the previous September, but once I knew that Andrew was leaving, the obvious answer presented itself - a skit on 'The Phantom of the Opera ', retitled 'The Master of the Choristers'. We started off, though, with Michael and another chorister playing their instruments; Michael played Bach's wonderful and poignant 'Arioso' on the cello. It was one of the occasions when he played at his best - I wish I had thought to ask someone to video it.

Then, with Andrew Millington completely in the dark as to what was coming next, we swung into the sketch. I had written a story for a narrator to join up the songs; The Phantom of the Opera became the Master of the Choristers; The Music of the Night became The Music of the Choir - and so on. All the singing was done by the three senior choristers and a few of the more 'have-a-go heroes' amongst the lay-clerks. I wasn't sure at first what Andrew was making of it, but I think he saw the funny side. The boys thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to send up their much-loved conductor and it turned into a really affectionate tribute. The afternoon ended with all the choristers - from senior down to the most junior probationer - coming together to sing 'Thank You for the Music', after which Michael presented Andrew with a copy of the sketch and an orchestral score by Elgar.

I think that by this time Michael was becoming quite emotional himself at the prospect of leaving the choir. After all, he had spent half of his life singing and working in the Cathedral. He had a very strong religious faith - although I am not sure that he had crystallised that in his own mind at this point - and he was uncertain about the new direction his life was going to take, although he was very much looking forward to having more free time, as he saw it. So by that Saturday night, he was quite quiet and thoughtful as we left the party.

The next day, Sunday July 11^th, 1999, was his last day in the choir. As usual, the day began with choir practice before Eucharist. Looking at the music diary for that day, I find it particularly poignant to see that the anthem at Eucharist was Durufle's 'Ubi Caritas'. I still don't know if that was a factor in Michael's decision to have it sung at his funeral, but it brings a certain completeness to it.

This Sunday was also Christopher's last singing day of the academic year. At St George's, there is always a family picnic at lunchtime, again masterminded and coordinated by the senior chorister parents. Graham and I had explained to Christopher that we wouldn't be at any of his services on that day ( my father was recruited to go to Evensong and take Christopher home ) but we would get across to Windsor for lunch. Back at Guildford, having finished Eucharist Michael then moved on to sing Mattins, which on this occasion was an extended service for Sea Sunday. Graham and I grabbed him at the end of the service and rushed round the M25 to arrive at Windsor in time to have a picnic lunch with Christopher, say goodbye to his leaving Head Chorister and his family, before getting back in the car and rushing back round the M25 to Guildford in time for choir practice for Evensong, which was a very special service. Being Andrew's last service, the Cathedral was full. Many of the congregation were ex-choristers and former layclerks who had returned from around the country for a short concert which was to take place after the service, and featured many of Andrew's favourite pieces.

As well as the 'normal' liturgy for Evensong, the three leaving choristers were 'valedicted'. All three mothers had tissues on hand for this particular occasion! In the middle of the service, the three of them left their choir stalls and came and stood in front of the Dean. Andrew then said:

'Sir, I present to you Michael Norton on his leaving this choir.'

The Dean answered with:

'Michael, on behalf of the Chapter and the Congregation, I thank you warmly for the years of your service to this Cathedral, when you have sung to the glory of God and to our delight.'

(Here the Dean presented a bible to him.)

'Receive this Bible. May its word be a lantern unto your feet and a light unto your path.

May God the Holy Trinity make you strong in faith and love, defend you on every side, and guide you in truth and peace. Amen.'

And that was that. The end of the most important and influential part of Michael's life. Except….. not quite. The absolutely last time he donned his cassock, surplice and medal was the following Saturday, July 17^th 1999, when he sang at the wedding of the Dean of Guildford's daughter. The anthem was the 'Hallelujah' chorus from 'Messiah' by Handel. I remember thinking that that was a pretty good piece to end a career on!

Anyway, we put all that behind us in August and set off for our annual holiday. For the first time in many years, we were going on our own and not with friends. I was slightly apprehensive about that - the thought of being with my immediate family with no outside mediators for three weeks was rather alarming! We drove all the way down to Amelia, about 40 miles from Rome, stopping off in the Alsace on the way for some serious wine investigation, and in Modena where we discovered nothing at all happens.

We stayed at Amelia in the most wonderful apartment in an old farmhouse owned by a delightful couple in their sixties. 'Mr Franco' and his wife were so welcoming and we took to them immediately. Every morning there would be fresh vegetables, eggs and honey on our doorstep and sat on the terrace enjoying the most fantastic views as we ate breakfast or dinner. We balanced our time between hot days of sightseeing and lazy afternoons in the pool. Mr Franco spoke a little English and we speak no Italian, so we got by in English and French, but he didn't need much language to communicate with Michael, to whom he took an instant liking.

The boys had always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, and we promised them that we would go into Rome on the high-speed train. This journey was purgatory for Michael, because every time we shot in and out of tunnels, although my ears 'popped' a lot, he seemed to be in agonies of earache each time. He recovered by the time we arrived at the Coliseum and he and Christopher were fascinated by this place which they had seen so often in photographs. For Graham and I, Rome is a special place because it was where we spent our honeymoon. Even so, we found it hard to keep up the enthusiasm when the temperature was well into the 90's! We packed more into one day than you would have thought possible - but the highlight was undoubtedly the Sistine Chapel. It was being cleaned and restored when Graham and I had been before, but now we could see it in all its glory. The boys were dumbstruck and we spent a long, long time looking at the frescoes and picking things out. Just how much they had taken in was obvious when we went to Todi and studied the incredibly bad copy of the Last Judgement which is on the back wall of the Duomo there. In fact, the boys specialised in 'Last Judgement' pictures - Christopher was always very keen to study devils and compare the 'yuck' factor of various artists. He had long been a fan of Breughel and Bosch so he found Leonardo rather tame, it has to be said!

Having finished at the Chapel, we went into the Basilica itself. The boys were totally overwhelmed by the size of the place and walked around with their mouths open in awe. Michael was used to the concept of an open space, because Guildford is very light and airy, but they hadn't really seen anything on this scale before. They spent a long time looking about them - and, I suspect, enjoying being out of the savage heat outside!

Then something unexpected happened. Graham and I, despite the fact that we were always worrying about Michael and his health at some subliminal level or another, tended to think that for Michael, it was a simple fact of life that he seemed to end up in hospital from time to time. I had been reading from the guide book and telling him who all the statues were, when he suddenly walked away from me. I turned around and found him rubbing the feet of, I think, St Luke - it said in the guide book that pilgrims did this in search of healing. When I asked him what on earth he was doing, he said, 'I'd love to have my hearing back - and I'd love to be well again.'  I was surprised and very saddened.

Overall, it was a wonderful holiday. No-one was ill, there were no trips to hospital and we thoroughly enjoyed being together. We ate and drank well, we enjoyed the sunshine and the company of our charming hosts and we even rose above the boys fighting over the latest 'Harry Potter' book!

By the time we arrived back in England at the very end of August, we were refreshed and ready for the next chapter in our lives. Christopher was looking forward to returning to school. I had a new job to go back to - I had been appointed Head of Keyboard Studies at the Royal Grammar School, with a remit to work three days a week and overhaul some of the extra-curricular musical activities. Michael, of course, was getting ready to embark on a new, choir-free existence. We all looked forward to the beginning of a new era in our family life.

And that was exactly what we got.