Turned on the radio to discover the media have named today Panic Saturday. Spotting an opportunity, I asked a friend recently diagnosed with acute anxiety if she would like to accompany me into town in the hope we might qualify for free parking. Thirty minutes later, Cynthia and I were pulling into a disabled parking bay directly opposite The Booze Bucket, her Prozac prescription clearly displayed on the dashboard next to a large crucifix. Experiencing the same rush as when I find any amount of money, I smirked across at my twitchy accomplice while ratcheting up the handbrake, confident our plan would work. So, you can imagine our surprise when, upon our return a mere nine hours later, we found a £70 ticket with a brusque rebuttal: Acute Anxiety? You’ll have to do better than that… issued by an equally dissociative traffic warden.

Now Cynthia can’t watch Top Gear and refuses to leave the house without her Dusty Springfield wig, so it’s no surprise so many folk hate the holidays.