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Oooowww, it hurts! On top of all my weakness and fatigue, my right hip has decided now would be a good time to start hurting. Sharp, burning pain, I’m sure many of you know it, and it probably led on to a hip replacement. I don’t want that. I don’t want major surgery, then to be bed-ridden again.

As well, I’m getting sharp sacroiliac pain, mostly right side but some left side too. Aaaarrrrgh! Getting onto the bed is pretty painful but getting up is something else. I can’t help yelling out, on top of the constant groaning I’m doing when I walk.

I’m gettin’ a bit sick of this. Nothing’s improving. I know I should be doing exercise, but this pain is so bad. Plus, my balance is shot. Many times, even holding onto the handlebars of the walker, I sometimes feel myself toppling over and have to make a conscious effort to straighten up.

I have Panadeine Forte (Panadol + codeine) and it sorta helps, but very slowly (hours) and very little. Which reminds me, time I took some.

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Crumbs, another year gone. Happy New Year everyone. I’m afraid I’m hearing of deaths and illnesses much more lately. My lack of mobility means I can’t attend funerals.

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I’ve been listening to the music of George Frideric Handel in the past week or more on Amazon Prime Music. Wow, what an amazing composer, what a huge number of pieces. His ‘Water Music’ and ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ are well known, but his block-buster is ‘Messiah’ his best known piece. We normally only hear the best verses but there are dozens more.

And when you add in his 43 operas and dozens of concertos, the Amazon Prime list is hundreds of pieces! I can listen all day, for days at a time, and keep hearing new pieces.

I’m rather pleased that I’ve actually visited the very London flat where Handel lived for most of his life. It’s upstairs off a major London street, via a wooden staircase (mostly outside) and is basically a one roomed flat, with a desk, table and a bed, with a wash stand. The thing I remember most was the creaking of the floor boards. They’ve been maintained and are nice and polished, but there are gaps – the woodwork wasn’t so good in those days. I’m talking the late 1600s and early 1700 (his life span was 1685 – 1750).

Which by coincidence was the same as Johann Sebastian Bach. How about that? Both were German born, but Handel visited London and stayed, whereas Bach, although he visited London, remained in a few German cities, mainly in the employment of cathedrals and nobility.

Handel made quite a lot of money from his prolific output and the staging of his operas and was quite a wealthy man at times, although he lost a lot of money too. C’est la vie.

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Another interesting thing is that Jimi Hendrix, the famous US rock guitarist, also lived in Handel’s flat for a few years, only 3 or 4, before returning to the US. Interesting.

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It pains me, but I might have to give up driving. I’m not in full control of my limbs any more. I get a lot of jerks and tremors. As a consequence the batteries in both cars are dying from lack of use. Damn, the Honda’s battery is not too expensive, but the Peugeot’s is huge and cost $300. I hope I haven’t killed it again.

Of course, if I only put some effort into regaining my fitness, I wouldn’t have this problem. Duh!

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I had help from a friend to clean out my freezer (the freezer compartment of the fridge) yesterday. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. We did toss out a few items that were well past their use-by dates and were not worth keeping.

But most of it was OK. I did find a home-made curry of unknown age (probably about three years?), but frozen solid in a good container. I didn’t want to throw it out and actually ate most of it for dinner last night, New Year’s Eve. It was good. I’m not sure exactly what kind of curry it was but I found a prawn in it, so it must have had more. It was good.

Anyway, the fact that I’m typing this next day, New Year’s Day, shows that it was OK.

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For some reason I’ve become addicted to YouTube video clips of USA police work. They’re about 10 – 25 mins long and I can’t stop watching them.

The amazing thing is the performance of the women the police have to apprehend. I won’t generalise and say all women are this way, but for many it seems that a relatively small amount of alcohol sends them into another brain-state. They become raging animals, hissing, fighting, swearing, biting, kicking, needing three policemen and another female policewoman to get them into handcuffs and into the police cars. Even then, they kick the compartment, and even bang their heads hard against the partitions, all the while spitting foul language and screaming non-stop. The police even have a thing they call a “wrap” which is a heavy canvas or vinyl thing with straps to wrap around the person and hold her still, without much success at times.

All the police have to wear body cameras these days, which is how we’re seeing this vision. I’ve got to give the police credit, 90% of the time, they’re extremely polite and tolerant in spite of the abuse they’re receiving.

There are men who need subduing, of course, but it seems nowhere near as many, and more in the nature of just trying to escape. Not so much of the craziness the women show.

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Uuuugggh, back to bed to try to get some respite from this hip pain. Zzzzzzzzz.