OK, I admit it - I am Mrs Worried from Worrytown on National Worrying Day. I worry so much about everything I hardly know where to begin.

Before I had my kids I worried about them being born disabled. When they arrived I worried they might die of cot death.

When they were old enough to play away from home I worried I wouldn’t be able to contact them, so bought them mobiles, then worried they might develop giant brain tumours.

When they went out I worried about them being abducted by perverts; when they stayed in I worried they were turning into a social disaster.

I used to worry about them not getting into university but now, with the criminal hike in college fees (thank-you Nick Clegg) I worry that they will.

Appearance is another abiding fear. I worry about getting old and wrinkled and looking like Dot Cotton but conversely worry that should I be brave/rich/vain enough to afford cosmetic surgery, I will end up looking like the Bride of Wildenstein.

So I lavish £37 on a tub of face cream and then worry that the old man will emerge from the bathroom, clutching it and bellowing ‘You spent £37 on THIS?’ when I have just told him that we’ve all got to cut down because..I am worried about money.

I worry about being too poor to afford high-lights and Lush Dream Cream and having to use the stuff they put on the bottom shelf at Boots instead, and I worry I’ll be so broke in my old age I’ll have to live off tinned pies.

I worry that I will never achieve all my ambitions but it’s also a worry because I am not sure what those ambitions should be.

I worry about the state of the nation, about the state of other nations, and the state of my dining room, which appears to have become the household dumping ground for everything we can’t decide what to do with.

Like one-in-five people I worry that I’ll get cancer, the old man will get cancer or the kids will.

I worry about flying on planes (crash/pilot having heart attack/blown to kingdom come by terrorists.) But then I also worry about travelling on boats (sinking like the Titanic/pirates) and the car (pranging it, after I’ve lectured my husband about pranging his.) Randomly I worry at night that I’ll go to sleep with my mouth open and a spider will jump in (pathetic but terrifying) or that I’ve accidentally left the gas on and there’ll be a fire.

Then I worry what I should rescue first from that fire, after the old man and the kids, and then I start feeling bothered because I can never remember if I’ve paid the premium to insure us against fires.

If you want a baroque example of my worrying it’s probably this: I fear we’ll suddenly become poor and lose the house but, conversely, when filling in the lottery ticket I once worried that we’d have to sell up and move to a hideous gated community if, by a miracle, we became millionaires.

Recognise any of this? If you’re a true worrier you will. Especially the next bit.

Because, even on those rare, balmy days when I really do feel I have nothing to worry about, I start worrying about that, feeling it must mean that very soon, something even worse will come my way.

So what can we do? I’ve read the books, looked up the websites and taken that homeopathic remedy which is supposed to stop this mental nonsense.

But, in the end, I try to cling onto the best advice about worrying that I’ve heard, courtesy of the great American writer, Mark Twain.

“I’ve had a lot of trouble in my life,” he said. “Most of which has never happened.”