I'm sitting in my garden on a sunny bank holiday, drinking a cup of nice strong coffee and talking to a friend on my mobile phone.

Hah. Just joking. Of course I’m not. Do you think I have taken leave of my senses?

For a start, we’ve had the only sunny bank holiday we’re due this century, and that was back in April.

But even more importantly, I am a respecter of popular science, particularly when it’s disseminated via lifestyle sections in the tabloids.

And I now know that to do the above could be very dangerous indeed.

Just this morning, I have logged on to a couple of newspaper sites and read that factor 15 suntan lotion is as good as useless in protecting you from malignant melanoma, and that using mobile phones may give you cancer.

Not do, says the World Health Organisation. May. Or, as they say in the Mail, admits WHO.

As if the entire world’s medical community has entered into a conspiracy to encourage the development of treacherous phones that will take video footage or tell you which street you’re on but kill you in the process, and has been caught red-handed.

And there in another article is an almost casual reference to the fact that caffeine and diabetes and heart problems are not necessarily strangers to each other, either. Basically, you’d better stay at home and hide under the table.

Unless of course you live in Cornwall, in which case you might be better off upstairs, as far away from the life-threatening radon seeping out of your garden as you can get.

I’m not underestimating the value of research into health.

Far from it. I’m glad I know that smoking is really, seriously bad for you and that if you can’t give up your fags you’re reasonably likely to have to give up breathing before your natural time is up.

That’s a high, proven risk that you can choose to take or not.

And I’m all for discouraging people from walking across roads with their eyes shut, or from fitting domestic electric showers without any experience or at least a glance at the instructions.

I even think it’s right that the state intervene and make the wearing of seatbelts compulsory, if only to spare paramedics the nasty experience of having to reassemble drivers and their passengers before they take them off in the ambulance.

But I can’t be doing with sweeping statements that are just written to get our blood pressure up over nothing. That’s probably a bigger danger than all their shock findings put together.

Yes, the sun is dangerous. Respect it and be sensible, and don’t even think about flying into it, especially if your wings are made of feathers.

But it’s actually quite good for us as well.

Same with water. Learn to swim a bit, and don’t mix it with electricity.

But don’t avoid it completely, or you’ll find that a potential health repercussion 30 years on from now is the least of your problems.

This state that we find ourselves in, unchosen by us and often pretty incomprehensible, is called life. And we all know it’s finite.

Even the most optimistic of us can’t seriously imagine we’ll still be round long after getting our first birthday card from the Queen.

No matter how many caffe lattes we’ve turned down.

So I don’t want to spend ten minutes of every remaining day worrying that some faceless organisation admits that it’s not sure whether I’ve got anything to be worrying about. I’m worried that could be a terrible waste of my time.

Off goes the computer. Out comes a book. And out I go to the garden, armed with a hat, a meringue and a cappuccino.

Oh, and my worry beads.