I started watching “A Discovery of Witches” whilst in hospital after my total hip replacement. The other night we started series three. The main protagonists “academics” from Oxford University, also a vampire and a witch, had just gotten back from time walking to Elizabethan London in search of an alchemical text. They want to understand the vampire “blood rage” so obviously they go to Imperial College London to do some research. The TV programme had footage of the main entrance on Exhibition Road and drone views of the South Kensington Campus. The wife and I looked at each other.

There is no getting away from the place. It is everywhere like a rash. Like an antibiotic resistant STI it keeps popping up. Since the COVID days it is often in the news.

The story looks at the so-called vampire DNA of the de Clermont blood line and has quite a lot of London footage so-far including mews shots etc.. I do not look back at my interaction with that institution with fond memories. I am sometimes embarrassed to have been associated. And now it is in a bloody TV programme too!! FFS.

I am now four weeks into the time after hip replacement. I can walk around the house unaided, no crutches. Yesterday we walked the hills of Lannion centre and today my muscles ache. The actual joint pain in the hip is markedly reduced from before. There is enhanced flexibility and it seems that the functionality will continue to improve. There remains some problems with early morning-late nocturnal pain in the sacroiliac joints and where the sacral spine joins the lumbar spine. This kicks in around 5 AM. I am down to only one co-codamol a night taken around 2 AM. If I get up and move around, do some back stretches, I can sleep on a bit. I am sleeping through the night. We go to bed about midnight and I am up 6 – 6:30 AM at the moment.

It is not ideal though is tolerable. I could easily take some more dope – some more codeine. But I don’t think that is a good idea. When I am able to lie on my right hip, the operated one, I may be able to sleep better. The pain goes away within minutes of getting up and moving around. The incentive is not to lounge around like a hippie in bed.

The problem is I am not looking forward to going to bed. I am not looking forward to waking up in the morning. A non-ideal situation. Not sure what to do. I may try some back stretches later today. The pain may not go and I might have to resort to my previous medication which worked before the operation. Too early to tell.

There could be an enhanced vigilance at play. The last time I went to sleep, I woke up with an eight inch scar and a lump of Titanium…that is what happens if you doze off..

Luckily I know that many things do indeed pass. The hip progress seems OK. The sleeping and pre-dawn pains could be better.

On the whole the now is a whole lot better than the before….