I’ve taken the morning off work, and in an ideal world I’d be lying in bed with a cup of tea to one side of me and Daniel Craig – oops, sorry, that should read chocolate croissant – to the other. However, this is not an ideal world, as ten minutes’ read of the newspaper quickly reveals.

A fifth of all bees died last year. The flying fox is on the way to extinction – and to add insult to injury, it’s not even a fox. It’s a bat. And polar bears are getting smaller because they’re suffering from stress.

I don’t know about you, but just reading the word stress makes my heart pound a little harder. Then I turn the page, and there’s a questionnaire inviting me to check whether I may be suffering from anxiety. This makes me feel ill at ease. If I do the quiz, I may find that I’m on the edge of a nervous breakdown, rather than merely slightly tense. But if I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of the day worrying.

I already suspect that I do show some slight signs of stress. For example, looking at it dispassionately, it’s not completely reasonable to shout at the weather forecaster on the telly for spending two minutes on a synopsis of the weather we’ve already had today. I know, mate. I was there. How much of my licence fee is being used to let me know that my washing got wet this afternoon, eh?

I start the quiz. Question number one asks if I have trouble sleeping or wake up in the night at all. What sort of question is that? Of course I wake up in the night. At about four o’clock for a wee. At about five thirty when some maniac up the road lets his dog out for its own first wee of the day, and the creature barks for ten minutes in sheer delight that its urinary tract is in full working order. And then when my husband goes to the loo. I’m not sure if that counts. I move on to question two.

Do I sweat when not exercising? Hmm, I don’t think so. Only in a sauna, or in the Med in July. I don’t even sweat when exercising, because basically I don’t exercise that hard. I think that’s probably a plus, then.

The next questions examine the movements of my digestive system and my heart. Too fast, too slow? Even Goldilocks wouldn’t have got this right. Yes, I sometimes feel palpitations, but only if I’ve been reading about the likely causes of heart palpitations. The same way that I feel quite breathless if anyone mentions asthma, or have had intermittent aching limbs and a mild sore throat ever since the Government sent me that pamphlet on Swine Flu. My GP is so clever she can predict when I’m going to make an appointment before I can, purely based on the health section of the Daily Mail.

At the end, I check how to score. If I’ve said yes to half or more of the questions, I’m stressed and might need to seek help. I add them up. There are 11 questions, and I’ve said yes to… Hang on a minute. How can you have half of 11? Five and a half yeses? Who sets these things? I throw the paper on the floor in disgust. The phone rings.

“Enjoying your lie in?” says my husband’s voice.

I breathe in slowly.

“Very relaxing,” I say.