Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

We'd like a loo under our stairs, an internal door to the flat below us, a small change in the kitchen bench and a skylight or two over it. Some velvet morning when we're in the black we'd also like to reorganise the back of the house.

The council would like a fireproof ceiling downstairs and probably wouldn't give us any permits to do anything unless they start with that. They're right, even the second loo wouldn't give us much joy if a tenant burnt the house down, but it adds about ten thousand to any project. The council must want us to have a holiday in Fiji rather than rush into any alterations, except possibly the bench; or maybe it's that the house would like us to get the deluxe expensive restorer of weather-tightness person to paint it so that it doesn't have to worry about leaking on anything new.