Whenever I get together with the group of friends that I was in Israel with on a year programme 53 years ago, there is one member of the group who always reminds us of his rule: each of us is allowed to show just one photo of their grandchildren, and to talk about just one of their medical conditions. As regular readers will know, I hardly ever break the first rule, and, until now, I have attempted to avoid completely boring you with details of my physical state. (My mental state, on the other hand, I regard as the natural habitat of the blog.)

However, today I do plan to talk about one of my medical conditions (and, Heaven knows, there’s lots to choose from). I do this purely to explain why you received notification of this post an hour earlier than usual. The reason for this is that, at precisely 09:00 IST, I expect to be sitting in the office of my orthopaedist, listening to him telling me that yes, he agrees, the time has come for me to have my right hip replaced, to match the left, which I had done about 7 years ago.

When I first saw the orthopaedist, 18 months ago, he suggested a range of treatments aimed at deferring the inevitable carpentry. (For carpentry is exactly what hip replacement is, if we’re going to call a spade a spade….or, in this case, a saw, a chisel and a mallet. I had the surgery under an epidural, which meant that, despite the best efforts of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites through my earphones, it still sounded as though I was in a carpenter’s workshop. This time, I plan to take Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.)

Guided by the orthopaedist, I had a short course of Feldenkrais, which served principally to confirm what I had long known – that I spend my days walking around blissfully out of touch with, indeed almost completely unaware of, the state of my body. Quite how unaware I was, I discovered when I had a 24-hour Holter ECG heart test shortly after being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. (Incidentally, for years I thought it was called a halter test, because the recording device is carried on a strap round the neck. Fortunately, I resisted pointing out to any medical staff that they were all misspelling the name, because I then discovered that the test was devised by, and named after, experimental physicist Norman J. Holter.)

When the technician attached the apparatus and briefly ran it to test it was working, she said: ‘Is your heart-rate always like this?’, to which I replied, in my blissful ignorance: ‘Like what?’. When I saw my cardiologist later, he informed me that I had reached, at one point during the 24 hours, a maximum of 230 heart beats per minute, which is usually accompanied by total unconsciousness. In my case, it was accompanied only by total unawareness, which, they tell me, is not the same thing at all.

So, the Feldenkrais was not a total success; I felt a little like someone with severe hearing loss being asked to comment on the second theme in a Schubert string quartet. Parallel to that, I underwent a course of acupuncture, which pierced both my skin and my scepticism, followed by a brief course of physiotherapy.

Although this multi-pronged attack gave me some relief, the pain still flared up occasionally, and, at one point, I started using a stick/cane. While this made walking easier, it did nothing for my equanimity. Several times, on the bus into Jerusalem for treatment, strapping teenage boys would fail to offer me a seat, which really depressed me. Occasionally, women and men in their 80’s would offer me their seat, which depressed me even more.

Around this time, we celebrated Esther and Maayan’s wedding. As a precaution, I took the walking stick to the wedding, but left it in the boot of my brother-in-law’s car, because I was not keen for my day to be spoilt by a constant stream of solicitous enquiries. Unfortunately, I didn’t explain to my brother-in-law that I had left it there intentionally, and he spotted it and very kindly brought it to me. The expression of shock on my cousin’s face confirmed, for me, that I would rather hop all day than walk around with a stick. Fortunately, I had a very good hip-day and really didn’t need the stick.

After a while, I found that the daily stretching and strengthening exercises that the physiotherapist had given me hurt considerably more than the hip, and (I admit shamefacedly), I gradually gave them up. I then enjoyed a year or more of very little pain, and I learnt to adjust to the restricted mobility. Summer was much easier: once the colder weather came, and I had to allow an extra five minutes for putting on socks every day, life became more challenging.

Over the last month or so, I have felt less convinced that I can rely on the hip, and, although I still suffer very little pain (unless I have to spend two hours changing the kitchen back after Pesach – but how often does that happen!), I have started using the stick again, particularly for the uphill walk to shul on shabbat, a walk which I used to describe as taking 12–15 minutes, but now takes 20–23 minutes.

The first time I used a stick, I borrowed a sober dark-brown one from Yad Sarah, the Israel-wide charity that lends out a full range of medical equipment. This time, I have started using my late mother-in-law’s stick. This has a rather jazzy paisley design in red, orange and old gold, on a vibrant green background. I feel I am of an age when I can start seriously cultivating a certain understated eccentricity, and this seems like a good start. (I can remember, as a child, playing with my grandfather’s walking stick, and rather fancying I cut a Fred Astairean figure.)

Unfortunately, the rubber ferrule (the cap on the bottom of the stick) must be wearing a bit thin, and it makes a rather audible tap on the pavement as I saunter to shul. I’m seriously contemplating acquiring a matching red and green parrot to wear on my right shoulder, and teaching it to say: ‘Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!’ Walking has been reduced to a choice between no stick and stick: that is, between Boris Karloff in Frankenstein and Robert Newton in Treasure Island.

Speaking of parrots, and other pets (effortless segue, as ever– how do I do it?), the family in Portugal has just acquired a new member. Lua is only 4 months old, so she looks as though, as she gets older, she’s going to need wide open spaces: it’s just as well that the kids plan to spend more time in the tipi on their land.