Tues 13th Jan 2015: Hip Op Day +4:

Wake up at 5.30 for medication and wee and examination of thigh which is now like a monster slab of doner kebab meat, like one made for special occasions. Decide to stay in bed with wheat pack and ice packs and watch the primary school children and parents arrive for morning school from my window.

Don’t get up until 10. Have breakfast and shower downstairs with Jane’s assistance. Cannot look at my leg in the mirror – it looks obese.

Jane cleverly uses a plastic bag (we learned this at the hospital) to aid the putting on of the surgical stockings.

I ring the hospital to ask for advice re monster leg. Am told that I have been sitting for too long and that I should have been lying down with my foot raised above the level of my bottom. (I seem to remember somebody telling me something vaguely upon these lines).

Jane sets me up on the sofa in the sitting room with my leg raised and a pink teddy wheat pack, blanket and ice packs for company.

Continue to read H is for Hawk. It is absolutely brilliant.

Jane is doing her tax returns. I try to help by putting a set of receipts in order according to date but find that I cannot do it. Is it the medication, loss of blood or exhaustion? My head is in the clouds. I give up and fall asleep.

A man calls to mend the alarm. He looks like a footballer. I am very jealous of the way he skips around the dining room table and glides down the steps into the hall.

While I am lying down, I realize that I have enough time to de-bobble my Joules white hoody top. It takes three quarters of an hour. I am so tired by the time I have finished that I go to sleep again.

After a cottage pie tea, watch endless television – Michael Portillo with his Bradshaw’s Guide in Deptford, a gardening programme on irises and grasses, the World at War in the Pacific (Pearl Harbour and Midway) and an hour long programme on slimming which I manage to sleep through with Bertie the cat resting on my tummy while he licks the wheat pack through the blanket.