Belle and I had a desperate need for live yeast. Convinced that we’d find some in one of the breweries off Dalry Road, we set off from my flat in two separate taxis. I climbed into the one that had brought Belle to my place from Leith earlier that morning, while she followed me and my driver across Edinburgh at the wheel of a second black cab.

Belle’s passenger was a small grey-haired man with multiple food allergies. At first I thought he might be a suitable boyfriend for her, but he really was far too shy and, in any case, he had long-term plans to leave the country.

At the brewery the aproned boy asked how much yeast we needed. I had no idea. How fortunate that I knew my regular bread recipe by heart! I recited the full list of ingredients to make a wholemeal loaf in a Kenwood BM256 breadmaker. He paused for a moment then suggested that a half-moon shaped section about the size of a broken digestive biscuit would do the job. I was suspicious that he was just fobbing me off when he popped what looked like a half-eaten rice cake into a paper bag and handed it over to me. Meanwhile Belle had lost all interest in leavening agents and was instead eyeing up a display of chocolate.

Then suddenly a phone buzzed in my pocket. This was not my phone: mine were both in my handbag. It was TPR’s mobile. He was at the airport and needed his phone back now. A business trip to the US without it was out of the question.

The airport was yet another taxi ride away. We’d already spent £60 just getting from one end of Edinburgh to the other. The quest for a lump of yeast – now complicated with a request for custom phone delivery – began to look like the first step along the one-way street to bankruptcy.