Sorry we haven’t spoken in a while. Honestly, it’s not you, it’s me. We’ve just never bonded, and lately I feel like we’ve been growing apart. But mainly, it’s because Ash just got a contract in Edinburgh and I never found the right job in the west.

So, the great Glasgow experiment is coming to an end almost exactly a year after it started: we’re looking for a place to rent in Edinburgh and have already found tenants—friends of Ash from her Masters course—to move into our flat in the new year. Last weekend, then, we happened to be in Edinburgh for the Death Cab for Cutie gig on Friday night, and took the opportunity to book a couple of flat viewings for the morning after. I’ve already skived off work to view a few places over the last week or so, and although no one of them was completely right for us, it’s still encouraging that there are so many decent places up for rent.

After viewing the flats on Saturday morning (no dice again, but also nothing startlingly wrong with them), and on our way back to the centre of town, we went in past Jez & Serena’s to drag them out for breakfast. Finding them still in bed (not literally; I mean, we didn’t burst into their flat and storm disapprovingly into their bedroom or anything. It was enough for Serena to tell us as much over the door intercom), Ash and I pottered along to Baroque for some breakfast while they got up.

It was a pleasant little interlude: the day was sunny, the bar was quiet and the food was decent. I leafed through the paper over French toast and coffee, pointing out the stories cataloguing the worst points of capitalism’s ongoing meltdown.

Jez and Serena arrived, and I moaned extensively at them about the dire state of the mortgage market. At this point we hadn’t yet found out if our new tenants were going to bite, and I was somewhat concerned that we could be forced to sell up in order to move to a new place in Edinburgh. “No-one is buying just now, and we could end up paying two mortgages, or just lose a boatload of money on the whole thing. I have no idea what to do. Have you guys been affected by the credit crunch at all?”

Jez reflected on this.

“In my company, they don’t let us take the private jet anymore.”

There was silence, and then laughter.