I walked up to the doctors and back today – one hour and five minutes. My thighs and calves definitely feel it, but I’m so pleased I don’t care. I haven’t had any morphine since 3:45am. I feel fine, I did have some paracetamol to help my legs [morphine doesn't relieve muscle pain for some reason] earlier. When I got home I took a shower, afterwards I waited for the pain to make me put the flight socks back on and so far I haven’t had to.

Being able to go outside again for a significant length of time is indescribable. I spent so many months lying on the sofa too ill to even go upstairs. Even on days when I felt well enough to possibly leave the house my energy got spent so quickly that it was 10 minutes of air and movement – if that. Being trapped in the house was bad enough – but to be trapped in my head with the deafness as well… It was a very lonely, very isolated block of time. I don’t think anyone will ever understand unless they live it themselves. This freedom is intoxicating, exciting and brimming with possibility. I find myself with half a smile on thinking about my next walk and where I’ll go now that I know I can do an hour – maybe a little more.

I finished my application for incapacity benefit and it is going in the post today. I also finished the form to allow me to vote in US elections from here. So I’m pleased that I can cross those off my list.

Weasel and I had a brilliant Valentine’s evening. We had planned a fancier dinner and proper letters, but in the end a simple pasta dish was all we needed and I made a card which was 10x better than what a letter would have been. In her letter to me, Weasel said that this year has made us a stronger family and I swooned. I love that she is my family, I love the feeling of that word when it is about us. We watched Oranges are not the only Fruit – what we thought was a movie turned out to be a TV series and it was not good. We watched the first episode, debated about watching the second and we just couldn’t. Despite that, all things considered the evening was a complete success in my opinion.

While visiting Weasel in the library earlier this week I spotted a copy of A Clockwork Orange that I didn’t know we had. So I’ve started reading it. I’m only 34 pages in so far, I’m moving very slowly mostly because I have no idea what the fake words mean. Guessing the definition from the context is okay most of the time, but I get lost. Plus I’m not used to concentrating so hard while reading, normally I sort of fall into the book and swim along. We’ll see what we think, as always if I can read Lord of the Rings and Catcher in the Rye I can read anything.

I’m bracing myself to visit UKA tonight, I asked a few weeks ago for people to recommend books, websites, TV shows and films to me and I haven’t really been back since. I went once a day or so after, but got so overwhelmed I didn’t reply. Since then I’ve managed to regain some of my cognitive functions and I think I’ll be able to cope now.

Tomorrow we’re going to go to see Stoat, Mal & Doodle. I’m 50% excited and 50% nervous. It’ll only be for lunch, so I shouldn’t be nervous and I was much more ill when I was there in October than I am now, so I don’t know what I’m doing. As long as I make sure that I take all the drugs I might need, flight socks and anything else I might need I’ll be fine.