FIRST Ciara, now Dennis … there has been a considerable quantity of precipitation of late. So obviously the hole in our roof has become something of an issue.

Perhaps we should have had it looked into (sorry – terrible joke, but I’m needing cheered up) when we got wind of the problem (at it again … apologies). But it didn’t seem that pressing. Last August.

So hell mend us. Like those “five-minute jobs” that tend to take five years (I once bought a curtain pole and had to take it to the charity shop five years later, by which time we’d built an extension and the window for which it was planned no longer existed), we failed to mobilise on the ropey roof.

The rain, hail, sleet and snow seemed so far away back then. But we should have known. We are Scottish, after all. We should have secured the services of a roofer back when the weather was more clement … and when there was less demand for such services in the aftermath of Ciara’s chaos. Just as the fixing of a dodgy boiler seems a low priority in the summer months, it’s the unwritten rules of domestic engagement that dictate the boiler will always pack in when temperatures plummet.

In defence of our tardiness to act on our leaky roof, it should be pointed out that we have a long, proud history of Terrible Bad Luck with tradesmen.

If there’s a bad job to be done we’ll find it. Would you like your corners cut? Certainly – you’re hired! How about two windows for the price of three? A bargain!

After 25 years of home-ownership and dodgy jobs, we don’t even attempt to assemble competing quotes for comparison. We might as well stick a pin in the Yellow Pages, or whatever the Google equivalent is.

There’s no point wasting time kidding ourselves. We just get straight on the phone to Cowboy Construction Ltd or DodgyBuildersRUs. It’s the only way to avoid disappointment.

We’re still traumatised by the New Bathroom Debacle. After years of DIY, we decided we’d splash out – literally – on a professional job. This seemed to have been a good move. For a year. Then the tiles started popping off the wall in the kitchen – which is directly below the bathroom.

The cause? A tiny pipe for the decommissioned electric shower had not been removed, just capped off … but not properly. Twelve months of quiet dripping had wrought havoc. We were to spend the next six months with an open-plan kitchen/bathroom, not a concept you often come across in Grand Designs.

Anyway, the insurance paid up, the damage was fixed and it wasn’t really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. And secretly, we actually hated the swanky new tiles anyway.

But in hindsight, we should maybe have paid more attention to the fact that the guy from the bathroom company did wear ACTUAL cowboy boots.

Meanwhile, back to our present predicament. As wind and rain lash Scotland, is our roof now watertight?

You will not be surprised to learn that the roofer failed to turn up.