Tragedy struck this week. On Monday, I bit my cheek so badly that it’s been miserably painful and I’ve found it hard to eat all week. It’s only today, Sunday, that it has perceptibly begun to heal. Usually – and I do mean usually, because I do it very often – it heals in a few days, so it must have been especially bad this time.

The mortgage for the house is still not arranged. I sent yet more documentation requested by the underwriters. I feel like they’re just taking the piss now.

Those of us in England can sit outside a pub tomorrow. That is, if you can find one that has space and it isn’t, for example, snowing, as it was today. I’m still hoping to do so, mind you. After spending so long in the same building, the prospect of just sitting somewhere different with a book and a beer is really appealing.

I’m looking forward to having someone else cut my hair again. I managed to get my last proper haircut the day before they were forced to close back in December. I’ve done it myself well enough over the past year, but it’s really not the same as a professional cut, and it’s noticeably harder to style than when cut by someone skilled.

This block of flats feels like it’s slowly dying. We live in a strange building that has been cursed with many peculiar attributes, nowhere more so than when it comes to lifts. To explain the Byzantine complexity of the situation would take diagrams and thousands of words, but the short version is that two lifts are broken, and because of Covid we’re sternly enjoined from sharing a lift, and that’s pretty inconvenient if you live on a higher floor.

As I understand it, the lifts required a complete overhaul a few years ago. It would have been slightly more expensive to replace them, so they chose the cheaper option, and now they have a fleet of obsolete lifts that no one else uses any more, and spares are no longer off-the-shelf parts. The result is that when a lift breaks, it stays broken for weeks at a time while waiting for custom parts to be fabricated.

On the plus side, the building isn’t covered in flammable cladding, and I don’t have any personal investment in it, so as long as it doesn’t fall down in the next few months I can live with some inconvenience. All I need is that mortgage. That’s my ticket out of here.

I’ve enjoyed listening to the BBC Radio podcast about the Fake Heiress on my walks this week. (It’s also on various podcast services.)