There may be a short pause in p&c’s thrice-weekly broadcasts, as I am having hip impingement surgery this week – an event that I find exciting and horrifying in equal measures. Actually, perhaps slightly skewed towards the horrifying – scalpels and dodgy anaesthetics have been the unwelcome features of my dreams lately.

I don’t tend to use this blog to pour out the trials of my daily life – much as it is often extremely tempting – but what’s the point in the self-publishing revolution if you can’t self-indulge with no one to edit it out, right?

So, my gripe with life is this: for two years I have been living with a gnawing, burning pain across the sacroiliac area (otherwise known as le buttock) – it feels like a Chinese burn. I have been to osteopaths, consultants, pain clinics, physios, back shops, pilates teachers… there have been xrays, MRIs, very long needles, drugs, blood tests, expensive office chairs…

But, as anyone who has suffered from chronic pain will know, the worst part happens neither in your wallet nor in the clinics but in your morale: the frustration and the uncertainty, the searching for answers, the knocks, the waits for results, the days of research… and the hope against the odds that the pain would JUST BLOODY WELL GO AWAY and let you get on with your life. Go away it didn’t in my case but I’m hoping it will very soon.

I am reluctantly crossing the Tamar for surgery but I have to say, aren’t we lucky to have the kindest doctors, receptionists and nurses in Cornwall? Ok so I haven’t had the dreaded Nora virus that lurks in the wards of the Royal Cornwall Hospital, nor have I suffered one of those monumental administrative fuck-ups that I know can and do happen, but I have been in and out of wards and clinics most months since mid 2008 and not once has anyone been anything other than utterly lovely. And those volunteers who hand out cups of tea at hospitals (I’d love to link to them but I don’t know the name of the organisation?), well they are incredible.

So, see you on the other side! I hope they do a proper job.