Enough moaning about money using tortuous aeroplane metaphors, let’s have some straightforward genius comedy courtesy of Koolaid For Beginners, my brother’s blog.

The plumber’s just been to look at our damp patch.  It’s a very nice damp patch, one of the nicest he’s ever seen, in fact.  It’s well-rounded, damp without spilling over into full-blown wetness and pleasingly cool to the touch.

Oh, and it’s going to cost £300-odd to fix, as it’s coming from a crack in the water tank, which consequently needs replacing.

I thought our plumbing would need some serious work on it at some point – our heating system is a maze of pipes, valves, dials, taps, more pipes, more dials and more valves the like of which I’ve never seen before.  However, we could’ve done without it needing that work doing in the last few weeks before the Lovely Melanie returns to work, when our finances will magically stop their current freefall (hopefully!)

Imagine our finances as an aeroplane: the Lovely Melanie being off work and her maternity pay running out is the equivalent of the pilot collapsing unconscious and the plane going into a steep dive.

At the moment we’re heading for the ground at high speed.

The Lovely Melanie going back to work is the point at which the co-pilot grabs the plane’s joystick and pulls back hard on it.

As I’ve said beforehand on here, we had planned for this frightening nosedive by gaining a bit of metaphorical height in advance (i.e., saving some money), but one of the engines on the plane may have just fallen off.

We can still pull up, but it’s going to be more difficult and will take longer to fix later.

NOTE FOR MY PARENTS: don’t worry, this is not a plea for help! We’ve got it covered (so long as nothing else expensive breaks in the next six weeks…)