Today my window fell out of the wall. This was rather problematic because it’s quite a large window and I’m not really a very big girl. Naturally I was standing right below it at the time and managed to catch the two panes of glass (or rather, they fell on me but somehow didn’t shatter, and I held on out of pure shock) and shoved them back in the general direction of the the window frame (that is to say, I leant them against the same wall then went looking for someone bigger and stronger to fix it).

After consulting my dictionary to make sure I had the terminology down (ie. ‘my ‘window’ is now just a large gaping hole in the side of my room’), I went in search of the Hausmeister.

Insert David Attenborough nature channel voice here: ‘A rare and enigmatic breed, the Hausmeister, a German native but also occasionally found in northern Switzerland and parts of Austria, is seldom spotted and has certain consultation hours that effectually mean there is a six minute window of opportunity only during the equinox when there’s a southerly blowing, or in the midst of a meteorite shower, that he is available for consultation. You can see by the way he scuttles about with his nostrils flaring and ears to the ground that there will be, in fact, no electricity today, or indeed, for some time yet…’