Unexpectedly re-available is a very good phrase. I have often seen it applied to house advertisements and thought how fabulously impertinent it sounds, so I am asking the agents to attach it to the description of my flat now that it is back on the market after a right old hoo-ha with the buyer from hell.

Unexpectedly re-available is a grammatical tongue-twister, and a euphemism that manages to be both enigmatic and facetious at the same time.

I also like it because it speaks to me on a personal level. I have been unexpectedly re-available countless times and I wish I had thought of saying so whenever I went on one of those dreadful dating websites. Unexpectedly re-available, due to time wasters.

Well appointed, in good decorative order. Traditional yet versatile. Well cared for and tastefully improved over the years. Now in need of some modernisation.

Since the builder boyfriend went from semi-permanent fixture to permanent yet again — once more ‘on’ after being on-off for more than five years — I suppose you might heave an exasperated sigh and say that, in fact, I am more accurately described as ‘expectedly re-unavailable’.

He sent me a lovely Valentine’s card this year, actually mentioning the word love, although he signed it from him and the dog to take the edge off it slightly.

Earlier that day, I had pricked his conscience by telling him I loved him in a text, after Ellie Goulding came on the radio singing ‘How Long Will I Love You’.

‘Oh! I do love him!’ I thought, as the tears burst from my eyes in a surprising torrent and streamed down my face. So I texted to say so. And he sent a text back: ‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? And I love you even though you are a pain in the arse.’

I wiped away tears. ‘Yes. You’re a thorn in my side and I’m a pain in your arse,’ I texted, as Ellie Goulding sang ‘How long will I love you?/ As long as stars are above you…’

The funny thing was, I didn’t mention the song at all, but the card he gave me that night, signed by him and the spaniel, said that they loved me more than the stars.

I do believe in serendipity, or something guiding the universe that shows us through magical coincidences that It is there and that, despite the obvious horrors of the world, all is basically well and will be well. You may say this is silly, religionistic nonsense, but as it is the one optimistic streak left in me, I think it is best I hang on to it.

What is meant to be will be, I tell myself. If I didn’t think that, I would have gone mad after losing the buyer who three months ago promised me a quick cash purchase of my flat.

She wanted the kink in the kitchen floor plan corrected asap. But asap didn’t even come into it. A deed of variation is required and that needs the signature of the owner of the flat upstairs, who is also the freeholder. He keeps knocking on my door to tell me he has asked his lawyer for an appointment and he is definitely going to meet up with him at some point to start discussions about this laundry cubby-hole at the back of my kitchen under his garden stairs, which is not on the official floor plan — you know, so we can be sure there are no issues before he signs the corrected plan.

Yes, I think. Like the issue of him possibly owning the blasted cubby-hole and wanting to sell it to me for £50,000 or brick it up, knowing my luck.

In any case, the flat is back on the market. Will this mean I lose my dream cottage in the country? What’s for you won’t go past you, I tell myself. Someone wiser than me told me this, of course. I didn’t invent it. I can’t claim to know anything particularly useful after 45 years on this planet, except, perhaps, how to make pesto sauce from scratch and jump a horse over a nine-bar gate. There seems to be an ever-diminishing need for both these things, sadly.

But as fate would have it, the chap from whom I am buying the dream cottage has had a spot of bother with his purchase too, the agent told me, when I rang to fess up about my amazing disappearing cash buyer.

He is now in a chain, after initially thinking he would not be. He is waiting on the girl he is buying from to buy somewhere else before he can move in.

I think this means the dream cottage is still on the ‘meant to be’ list.