"LIFE is brilliant," says Betty Moorby, who has just celebrated the third birthday of Henry, her new lung.

Until the Staveley grandmother's transplant operation, Mrs Moorby, 56, spent two years confined to a wheelchair.

But now she captains the village ladies' mid-week bowls night, plays with her four-year-old twin grandsons and happily walks and jets off on foreign holidays.

"We had a bit of a binge at the weekend," admitted Mrs Moorby.

Not only was it Henry's birthday but her 34th wedding anniversary into the bargain.

There is no particular reason why Henry is so called, but when Mrs Moorby realised she could breathe properly for the first time in years, she quietly christened her new lung.

People now ask how Henry is doing.

Before her operation at Wythenshawe Hospital, made possible by an anonymous donor organ, Mrs Moorby could only manage a holiday in the flat Norfolk Broads.

"We went to Portugal in February and are off to Spain in September.

It's great just to be able to get on a plane and go," she said.

Mrs Moorby has raised over £200 for the Manchester hospital, which she says could not have done more for her.

On three occasions Mr and Mrs Moorby made the 90-mile dash to the unit, only to find a suitable lung was not available.

Finally, on July 7, 1998, she said she hit gold.

"I can't believe how different life is now," she added.