THESE are times that try men’s souls. I lie on my sofa, my left leg on a machine that lifts it up, bends the knee, and then lowers it back down. This is to be repeated eight hours a day. For the next three weeks.

This is my fourth knee operation. I’ve lain here before, musing on the flute-like musicality of crutches and writing about the marvels of microfracture – where the bone is cracked about 15 times in a square centimetre to stimulate the growth of cartilage-like material – and of how part of your hamstring can be sucked out, doubled up and implanted as a new knee ligament.

I know it all. Other people have shelves of holiday DVDs with key information on the spine: Spain 1998, France 2004... My shelf holds hospital DVDs, filmed live inside my own knee. There’s Scorton 1998 on the spine of the first, and Stockton 2009 on the latest.

So this time, there’s nothing new. There’s only the tedium of the continuous passive motion machine, and the prospect of having “faggot” shouted at me in the street, as happened last year when I could only take short, mincing post-operation steps.

I turned on Barack Obama’s inauguration in the hope of hearing soaring rhetoric which would give my tried soul wings.

But, for all the magic of the moment and all the hope in the world, Obama was grimly rooted “in this winter of our hardship”.

He ended with a powerful passage – “in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it”

– which some commentators have ascribed to the first US president, George Washington.

Originally, though, the words were written by Thomas Paine, inspirational idealist of the American Revolution, in December 1776, during the darkest days of the war. The British had pushed Washington’s raggle-taggle army out of New York City, back through New Jersey and over the Delaware River, killing 2,000 and imprisoning 3,000 in ships, causing Congress to flee the then capital of Philadelphia. Dreams of freedom were dying.

“These,” wrote Paine in the stirring first edition of his pamphlet, The Crisis, “are the times that try men’s souls.” It was a powerful call to arms in the bleakest midwinter.

“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.”

But 1777 was no better for the 13 united states. The British outmanoeuvred Washington and marched into Philadelphia.

Despite calls for his sacking, Washington holed up for the wet winter in Forge Valley, 18 miles from the forsaken capital. Disease and malnutrition carried off a quarter of his 10,000 men and he feared his army would “starve, dissolve or disperse”.

Yet he introduced daily drills and military discipline, and he had Paine’s words about hope and virtue read to inspire his troops.

Come spring, they emerged from Valley Forge rejuvenated, reinvigorated and renewed.

Then, they heard the British had left Philadelphia – a decisive victory won by sheer will and not weapons. There were many battles ahead but, for the Americans, there were green shoots of recovery.

Come spring, after the “winter of our hardship”, let’s hope we can emerge rejuvenated.

As Obama said, we have only hope to look forward to – and the rhythms of the continuous passive motion machine.