Real life | 27 July 2017

Quite stoically, I was mountaineering on my hands and knees over a sea of rubble to get to the temporary loo in the basement until I impaled my foot on a nail sticking out of a chunk of wood. It was partly my fault for wearing flip-flops, of course.

But the builder boyfriend grudgingly agreed I had to be mollycoddled, and allowed me the luxury of a scaffolding plank over the sea of rubble.

I was delighted with the new arrangement of walking the plank to the loo. But then one day I stepped onto the staircase to descend to the basement and the entire thing moved. It bounced up and down like a House of Horrors at the funfair.

‘Oh yeah, I meant to say,’ called the builder b as I screamed, ‘I’ve moved some bricks so those stairs aren’t fixed anymore.’

Two months into our renovations, I nearly have a bathroom. I nearly have a bedroom.