In my day... all you needed was a quiet day in bed.

We all get a touch of the vapours every now and again.

A day when everything goes just a little bit wobbly. When the rat race seems like a marathon too far, and you realise that you haven't got the stamina of an Ethiopian.

When you gingerly (or blondly, or brunettely, or mousily, or baldly) half open an eye then clamp it back shut at the sheer horror of it all.

When the thought of having to mix, one more time, with the mass of paranoid humanity that lurks outside your front door fills you with unbearable nausea and the nagging feeling that venturing into the world today will surely end in tears. Probably with your name in the headlines. And possibly a lengthy jail sentence.

When life, frankly, just seems too bloody difficult.

You're not actually ill, of course. You don't need a doctor, or a therapist, or an emergency reiki practitioner. And it's not finally time to do the decent thing and press the trusty service revolver in the desk drawer into action.

You just need a rest. A bit of a lie down. Some nice peace and quiet.

Some bloody chance.

If you haven't been kept awake all night by copulating urban foxes doing their spookily accurate impression of a small child being tortured, or jolted into twitching consciousness by next door's departing dinner guests playing Colonel Bogey on their car horn as they prepare to wend their Blue Nun enlivened way home, you've got it all to come.

Believe me.

I don't mind birds, really I don't. But in the old days I'm sure they whistled tunes. Now all they seem to do is impressions of mobile phones. 'Listen! I think I just heard the first Nokia of spring…or is it an early summer Samsung?' The same four notes over and over, and over again, without the merciful release of a message service kicking in to shut the irritating sod up. And once a tiding of magpies gets going you'd swear there were terrorists on your roof top unleashing round after round from their AK 47s. I wish I had one.

And postmen now moonlight as skip delivery drivers. I know this, because they patently deliver their skips before they start their day (or shall we say morning) jobs

The sound of a ton of rusty iron being dropped onto concrete from six feet at six in the morning takes some beating as an alarm call. You can't exactly ignore it. Before you realize it you've leaped out of bed, hidden the wife and kids under the stairs and painted the windows white, fearing another Hiroshima.

And paper boys need oiling. They never used to squeak. But that was before papers came with 17 different sections and the poor sods had to resort to industrial trolleys to avoid forever walking like the hunchback of Notre dame.

And maybe I've led a sheltered life, but though there are lots of things I've contemplated doing at seven in the morning (they can't arrest you for contemplation yet, can they? Can they?) erecting a shed isn't one of them. Surely you have to build up to that sort of thing. Have a bit of breakfast. And a cup of tea. Do some sketches and calculations on the back of an envelope. Hang around a DIY shop rubbing your chin and wielding an extendable tape measure. Have another cup of tea.

You certainly don't start hammering, willy nilly, at 7 in the morning.

Unless, of course you're trying to compete with the builders who have already started at half a dozen of the other houses in the street, knocking up loft extensions, conservatories and bloody garden pagodas, whilst having to bellow at each other in Polish to get above the din being created by the music played by the DJ on 'radio halfwit', who's inane twitterings are going to echo round your room for the next 8 hours.

Still, it's probably best that you're awake. Because your mobile's going to ping with texts from Nigerians looking for someone to help them bank their inheritance, and calls from people wanting to know if you're happy with your gas supplier.

As if anyone could ever be happy with a gas supplier.

The door bell will ring, and outside there'll be a man with a large, exciting looking package. But it won't be for you. It's always for the people 2 doors down that you've never met.

The postman will come about eleven and ask you to sign for a letter. That won't be for you either. And he won't apologise for the skip.

A bloke will come to check your meter. Ten minutes after you've been offered your third copy of 'Watchtower'. A small child wearing a homemade, mis-spelt 'official' laminated badge will call round to sell you dusters. School children will use your wall for football training, while their mates blabber incessantly on their mobiles. And a breakdown truck will stop right outside your house and flash orange disco lights in your bedroom for a good two hours.

A lorry will reverse down the entire length of your street time after time, bleeping like a heart monitor attached to a fading, spluttering patient.

The council, who haven't done any work in your street in living memory, will send someone round to lift the paving slabs in front of your house. Then put them back with a rubber lump hammer. While two blokes from a TV cable company holler at each other from either end of the street while they play tug-of-war with an unfeasibly long piece of green tubing.

Some greaseball will decide it's a good day to adjust the exhaust on his motorbike, and test drive it round the block. And everyone will blow their horns at him.

The kids will come home, go off in a sulk, slam their bedroom doors and belt out music that makes your teeth rattle to avoid the horrors of actual conversation with their parents.

And the wife will have a go at you for malingering.

Still, it beats working.