Mon 12th Jan 2015: Hip Op Day +3:

Wake up again at 5.30 with sore heels. I need to sit up. By 6.30 I am bored and cold and need to get up. Have wash, clean teeth and get dressed, using a long-handled shoe-horn to help tug up my pants and tracksuit bottoms.

Wait for Jane to get up. She supervises me downstairs and we sit at the breakfast table. While I drink my tea, I read an article on T.S.Eliot. It is a hundred years since The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was first published at the back of a magazine.

As soon as I have eaten my Weetabix, I need the loo. I take an article on punning in Duck Soup by the Marx Brothers with me. I read it while I manage a major evacuation. The Weetabix works wonders, allowing me to lose half a stone in one go.

Post-op exercises follow, mainly leaning against a dining chair. Then it’s into the TV room to watch an Alan Partridge box set while I fill in the Inpatient Questionnaire.

In the afternoon, Jane goes shopping. While she is away, I receive a visit from Steve who brings me a film magazine and his disgusting sense of humour. Immediately, I feel happier.

We discuss his forthcoming holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia and then our walking group’s trip to North Wales in the summer. Steve says that Alun has booked a hotel on the quay-side in Caernarvon for the weekend of the 26th June.

Will we climb Snowdon? It looks unlikely. Jesus, our group is physically falling apart. Phil has gout, I have a dodgy right leg (hip replacement plus arthritis in right knee), we have two members of our group who are as old as Methuselah, Neil is recovering from an abscess on his backside and there are bronchial complaints and asthma as well as various delusional conditions.

We also discuss a pub I have found in The Good Pub Guide, The Horseshoe Inn in Levisham, North Yorkshire as a potential base for next year’s walking weekend.

Increasingly aware that my right leg, the top bit above the knee, is now so swollen that it looks like a slab of doner kebab meat on a vertical rotisserie. You could slice quite a lot off before you get to the bone. The knee-cap has nearly disappeared.

Brisket tea followed by a phone call from Hannah.

Bed to read and throb.