DM playing a driving game on his Hudl is quite a good analogy for my day. He says he is getting worse – he started 15th and went down to 23rd. It took him ages to recover his position and start to win again.

Me? I started my day badly (sort of equivalent to 15th then plummeted fast. My problem? Everything I touched crumbled to dust. It all got really perplexing and difficult and I suspect that certain elements of my working life have suddenly become extraordinarily over complicated. I doubt it was helped by my floundering around in the dark looking for a solution, I just made it worse.

I was so stressed, I barely moved from my desk all day and my rising panic at a deadline looming meant I spiralled down into such a state that I was completely unable to make a sensible decision. In the end, I sent all of my work home on email and picked it up again an hour later after driving home and exercising the dogs. Suddenly the mist of anxiety cleared. I can do this. I am perfectly competent in the skills I needed to do the required task, I’d just been bamboozled by things that I need not have been worried about. I sat down and concentrated and managed to do the whole job, including translating into French and German, in a couple of hours.