Was totes knackered last night and retreated upstairs around nine o’clock. Needed help getting my left leg into bed but it’s already improved this morning and managed by myself. The knack is to sit on the edge of the bed, hook the good foot under the “bad” leg at the ankle and hoist them both up. Simples. Progress. Woke briefly at four thirty and dropped off again until six. Already doing prone exercises in bed. They make a difference. Rotating the feet keeps blood clots away and squeezing your cheeks and pressing down the “bad” leg helps strengthen the operated on area. After the initial post op incapacity I am already confident that progress will be good.
The love of my life has gone downstairs to make the tea.
I was picked up from the Park Hospital at three o’clock yesterday by our Joe who has very kindly come up for the week to help out. All our kids are good. THGs car ain’t the biggest Peugeot 208 in the world and there is a knack to getting into it after having a new hip. The front passenger seat has to be pushed as far back as it can go and you have to go in arse first whilst squeezing your head through the highest, rearmost bit of the doorway. Needed help getting my left leg in. Getting back out is legs first followed by head then bum. A far cry from the days of the Land Rover defender where the seats were at the perfect height and with plenty of headroom you just had to slide yourself across. There again the defender wouldn’t fit in most French car parks.
Am about to postpone next year’s trip to Vietnam btw. Turns out October is the rainy season. Both Hue and Hoi An are under water and the hotels I’ve booked are islands. It’s a good job I spotted this. Will be rebooking at some stage. October is too risky a month for what was not going to be a cheap trip even when using Avios. Comments on Vietnam travel sites say that nobody goes there in that month. We booked it because my companion voucher runs out then but we can repurpose that.
Now downstairs and have consumed three small slices of toast (sourdough) and marmalade. That was the end of the loaf but THG is off on a scavenging mission on her bike this morning and will no doubt come across another loaf. We have some bacon in but tbh that is too filling right now. Will restart the jabs on Monday but it would appear that a few months on Mounjaro has left me with a small appetite even though I stopped it a couple of weeks prior to the op. This is good. May not need lunch.
There are potatoes, potahtoes bubbling away on the stove. What what what do I hear you say? At breakfast? A pea and watercress soup is in the offing which, as you will know, contains spud. I have a ham knuckle in the freezer awaiting call up for a ham and pea soup but I will need to wait patiently for that. That soup is not yet on the radar. Perhaps when the cold weather starts to bite. There is nothing quite like home made pea and ham soup. Whenever I see a ham down to the knuckle at Waitrose I tend to buy it.
The news this morning suggested that parts of the country would have frost today so pea and ham soup time might not be that far off. I look forward to the need to don my thick Black Yak Himalayan woolly sweater. Bought it at the Lincoln Christmas Market a year or four back. Solid.
I am not in a hurry today. Joe has gone out running. The build up to the Seville Half Marathon has already begun. Three out of four offspring are running plus a son in law. We will all be descending on Seville towards the end of January. Runners and supporters. Only shame is the flights don’t arrive until Friday evening which more or less writes off that day. Can’t imagine the runners will want a late night even though the race isn’t until Sunday. I’m going to rent a car the following Monday and go on a tour of southern Spain ending up in Gib. Dad did his National Service there with the RAF and I’ve never been so a visit seems overdue.
Last night’s fox action was no fox. It was both cat, variously at 05:49 and 06:22 and muntjac deer at 01:51. I was going to say tiger not cat but it didn’t look anything like a tiger, having no stripes and tiger would have been big news. Imagine catching a tiger on lake cam never to see it again. Where did it go? What happened to it? Were it not on camera nobody would believe me. It wasn’t on camera. Believe you me 🙂
Today will mostly be spent on my laptop in the snug. The advantages is that I am set up there for the following month. Comfy armchair at the right height, small table to put my tea cup down, stuff like that. On the other hand the shed has two large screens making it a far more useful workstation. Even when looking at your family tree it is useful to be able to jump back and forth between windows. See how I get on. My desk chair is also at the right height but it concerns me that the deck might be a little slippery.
More in due course, I daresay.
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Aforementioned pea and watercress soup consumed for lunch. Luvly. Fair play. With a crust of brown bread and butter. Never understood why anyone eats bread without butter. The Europeans do. Also our John. Didn’t get it from me. If we are in a restaurant in France or Espanã I usually ask for butter to go with the bread though not if it’s to eat with cheese. Don’t need it then. Especially runny cheese like camembert. Yogi likes French cheese, camemcamem bear. If you know you know.
Now sat back in the snug with THG having to endure the news on the wireless. Streaming on the telly actually but same thing. Only thing is I don’t like listening to the news. Never anything good. Ole Trump’s middle east ceasefire seems not to have held, does it. Bang goes his Nobel Peace Prize. Again. Hey… I guess he will have to move quickly before senility completely takes over. Or has it already? Uhoh.
There is good news about new species found on a remote sea bed. Very good.
The radio is also on in the kitchen where a son is fixing himself some lunch. Now it’s been switched off in the snug. Phew. Replaced by the click of needles of the tricoteuse. I prefer this to the news. Quite relaxing. A far cry from the French revolution and madame la guillotine. A shudder runs down the spine. Clunk. The sound of a head falling off.
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Went for a nap on the bed. Put the heating on. Bloomin cold just sat in a chair. Now I’ve put on a dressing gown and also got a blanket over me legs in the snug. THG will come back from her swim and complain that the house is too hot. Joe is in the shed where the heating will be on. The shed is a nice warm place to hang out. He is working. I’m not. I am drinking too much tea though. Keep having to nip to the loo. Not particularly good when you are on crutches. A mad dash to the toilet is not good on crutches 🙂 Will have to cut down on the liquids.
Ordinarily I mix my time between the shed, workshop, total fitness (pool) and the house which varies my routine. Plus spins out to Waitrose, diy shops and golf. Not so many trips to diy shops. I still haven’t finished sorting out the workshop. The screws are separated onto countersunk and round headed but I still need to arrange them by size and thickness. Something to keep me busy over the winter. For example an M6 screw has a 6mm diameter. I don’t know which screws are which M. It makes sense to have them sorted by both thickness and length. I’m sure that some of my older screws are “imperial” so perhaps that is yet another subdivision. Will have to see. To some extent it is down to which rawplugs to use and which drill size. This is important 🙂
I might invest in some calipers for this job. There may be some already in the workshop though I don’t think so and I won’t know until I’ve finished with the sorting. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. The other tools I “need” are a socket set. Maybe just order online. Hang on. Metric or imperial? 🙂 I don’t need these things until I have regained mobility. At least 4 weeks which is when I can drop a crutch. Tuesday 25th November. Fingers crossed the time will go quickly.
I’ve resorted to BBC iPlayer. The Secret Letters of Mary Queen of Scots. Sfine. I prefer historical documentaries to populist stuff.