EVER since I was in my teens, I’ve had recurring anxiety dreams. As far as I know, they haven’t coincided with any particularly stressful time in my life, but they strike now and again, and take two particular forms (three if you count the one about escaped livestock on the family farm).

The first scenario is I’m late for a hockey match. The second is I’m late for work (usually a news conference).

In the former, I can’t find my shinpads, and my gumshield is missing. My boots are nowhere to be seen. My socks are still in the wash. My phone won’t work to ring the captain to say I’m running behind schedule.

When I eventually get to the pitch, the match has already started. I put myself on, but I’m in slow motion. Even the most basic of manoeuvres are beyond me. It’s like my feet are covered in treacle and I’m running at the speed of an arthritic snail.

The second dream, I think, goes back to my days as a news editor. I wake up too late to get to Darlington for our 12pm news conference, where I have to present a news list to the editor.

My car keys have disappeared and I haven’t showered but I get to work with two minutes to spare to find no stories, a blank list and room full of grumpy executives.

These dreams always make me feel uneasy for the rest of the day. There is a creeping sense of dread within them, a paralysing inertia which, for someone used to getting things done, is very distressing.

Luckily, I only have one of these dreams every few months, but this week, I got the same feeling of discomfort during waking hours, and I couldn’t shake it off.

Watching Theresa May’s tired, pale face under the media spotlight day, after day, after day put me right back there in my dream, hunting through my hockey bag for my kit as time ticks away.

The political deadlock the country finds itself in is like one, long anxiety dream.

Our feet are stuck in concrete, never mind treacle. We can’t go forwards, we can’t go backwards.

I doubt that the Prime Minister has time for much sleep, but I wonder what her personal anxiety dream would be. Trapped in a lift with Jacob Rees Mogg? Opening the next EU summit with a song from a show? Finding out Stacey Dooley had a twisted ankle and she had been drafted in to dance the samba with Kevin Clifton in tonight’s Strictly Come Dancing final?

Anyway, I digress. At the end of a dramatic week, we are no closer to finding a way through the tangled web of Brexit. Let’s hope that when the country is finally able to wake from this restless slumber, we are not as tired and tetchy as I am after a night of mentally searching for sportswear, or trying to get to non-existent meetings.

There won’t be enough cups of tea in the world to get us through that one.

ONE of the projects I am most proud of since becoming editor is our special Armistice Day edition marking 100 years since the end of the First World War. We’ve had the calculators out, and totted up that the paper raised a grand total of £2,468.40 for the Royal British Legion. A huge thank you to all involved in the project.