I had a rather busy week this week; on Friday I completed the Guild of Master Sweeps CCTV inspection and integrity testing course at Spec Flue in Sudbury. A great day out, which was very instructive, and I was able to meet some old friends from the sweeping community. It was great to have a detailed input into things to look out for whilst inspecting various different typed of chimney. It was additionally very worthwhile seeing the various types of CCTV and pressure testing systems that are on the market at the present ranging from the expensive to the relatively inexpensive. It was also good to see some of the various features that are available on some of the systems, like pan and tilt, recording and stills capabilities, and high-resolution picture quality. The Woeller and Reiss systems being the most expensive at around the £6.000 mark and the least expensive being the Rodtech Grenade system at around a thousand pounds. The Advanced Camera System that I use being somewhere in the middle price range and was the one I was most impressed with.

I said it was a busy week, because on Monday I was at the Royal Papworth Hospital where I had a so-called balloon angioplasty procedure to unblock my existing cardiac stent which was becoming blocked. I had started feeling unwell before Christmas and had steadily become worse, although I am feeling immediately much better. Amazingly, I arrived at Papworth Hospital at 7am, I had the procedure which took about an hour and was released at 1.30pm. It is just so amazing the sort of keyhole surgery that they are able to perform these days and I’m so grateful to all the Cardiac team at Papworth Hospital, they are fantastic! Hopefully I will be good for at least another 10 years!