"It might feel sad if I hadn’t painted my eyelashes shut"

MONDAY 1.30pm: I am up a ladder, repainting the back eaves of our house, with a two litre pot of paint — and vertigo.

My husband, in leg-plaster for a torn Achilles, has been providing moral support.

This has taken many different forms; right now, he’s standing at the bottom of the ladder and eating a sandwich he made for me, which I refused stiffly, eyes front. What with the vertigo, I couldn’t look down.