I’m trying very hard to see as “opportunities” rather than “glaring faults” those little surprises that continue to crop up in relation to the flat. The other day I had got round to booking an electrician to refit the light fitting in the kitchen. He scaled the stepladder to the rarefied heights of our vaulted ceiling and examined the fitting in minute detail.

“Aye, you’re buggered,” he said. “These wires are from Edison’s time.”

So now I can look forward to the exciting prospect of forking over a G or two to have the lighting circuit rewired. With this unexpected opportunity to increase the value of the flat by dint of ploughing some more money into it still foremost in my mind, I got a text message from the previous owner on lunchtime at Friday. “The lady downstairs called me to say there’s water leaking into her kitchen. She doesn’t have your number and didn’t know who to call.”

I called Ash in a rising panic, but she was in a lecture and her phone was turned off. I pleaded crippling fear to my boss, jumped into the Trøll to head home with all speed and pulled out of the office car park straight into a traffic jam.

The traffic did not abate. Ever. It took two hideous, frustrating hours to crawl home, by which time Ash had received my frantic messages, calmly found a minute dribble coming from the back of the washing machine and placed a pot under it to catch the drips.

“That’s it?” I gibbered.

I cycled along to a local hardware shop on Cathcart Road and was persuaded by the owner to replace the leaky pipe in its entirety rather than trying to patch it up. I handed over the £3.50, cycled back and screwed it all back together in about five minutes. The stopcock duly reopened (does it becomes a startcock when it’s closed?), I held my breath and watched with relief as the floor stayed dry. The ultimate step of doing a load of washing was taken, and the new pipe passed with flying colours.

I think I shaved a good couple of days off my life expectancy that day with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and in the end it was solved by £3.50 worth of rubber tubing. The lack of drama was somewhat deflating.

Apart from the odd trauma such as this, we seem to be well ensconced in the flat. We had a mini housewarming last weekend and well and truly wet the baby’s head in the pleasant company of Jeff, Devon, Ruth, Andy, the band and a few other notables. Charlie lurched about with an ever ready bottle of Jack Daniel’s; Doug went to sleep; we listened to some German prog rock produced by a friend of Jeff’s and generally made merry. RFHQ III (or IV, perhaps; I’ve lost count) is open for business as usual.