THIS COLUMN, like any others which have carried my name in this newspaper, is written from home.

To those stuck in the dark, satanic newspaper/estate agents/Widget Company Compliance Department offices, this probably means that I am already living the dream.

To those who Work In An Office, working from home is a nirvana-like situation where you arise in daylight, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, pop off to pilates, return home at 10am and only then settle down to produce that which you are paid for.

You knock off at noon for a spot of lunch and Jeremy Vine before gliding out of the door to purchase a few nice things at Sainsbury’s before arriving home to pick up/greet your children from school and enjoy quality time with the old man before... well, you get the picture.

The office-bound fondly waffle on about how their home-working counterparts can ‘go outside in the sunshine’ and ‘work later’. They claim you can flob about in your jimjams all day and ‘no one will know’, and how you must save ‘all that money’ by not having to drive to an office and lunch on ruinously expensive sarnies.

Pfffff! Here’s what working even part-time from home actually entails… Instead of spending the weekends cavorting with your little ones, or even your teenage ones, you are always, always hammering away to meet a deadline.

The only exception to this is when it’s freezing cold and raining outside, when you can guarantee there will be nothing that needs completing. Because you spent all the sunny time completing it.

Working from home guarantees you will be eyed up as a possible recruit to any and every enterprise in your village which needs a volunteer or new member for its committee. Which basically means all of them.

You’ll be approached – much the same way a viper approaches a baby mouse – by the ladies of the village who have marked you out as suitable prey because your car is occasionally parked on the driveway between the hours of 8am-7pm.

Lunch, as all stay-at-homers will already know, consists of a dismal trawl through a fridge that has been relieved of anything remotely edible by the Teenage Sons, so you are reduced to microwaving a baked potato and plonking on top the only thing left in the fridge, which will be a rancid piece of Emmental and some chilli jam. (What is it with chilli jam? I’ve got three jars of the stuff and no clue as to how it got there or who gave it to me.)

My working day at home begins at 6am if I am lucky and 5am if I am not and then it’s three solid hours of chores because I am the At Home one. By 8.30am I will be sitting at my desk. But not for long.

The rest of the day will be spent crashing down the stairs to sign for various Amazon parcels ordered by the children/the neighbour/the neighbour’s children, rescuing baby blackbirds from the ever-open jaws of the Enormous Ginger Cat (the sound of infuriated mother blackbirds is so mind-messing that I’m surprised the US Army don’t use it instead of waterboarding), or haring dementedly to the washing line to bring in the laundry as the gathering storm threatens to soak the lot.

Yes, you may save on petrol but you lose on heating, the bills for which are spinechilling. You also don’t have the IT support man just a screech away – he’s on the end of a very expensive telephone line – and you get so lonely you end up talking to your cat.

The only real plus is that you can stare into the middle distance if you so wish, at the daisies dancing in the field, the ponies in the paddock and daydream about winning the lottery. Failing that you can always hope that the next time the Village Ladies or the Jehovah’s Witnesses advance up your driveway, they trip over the Enormous Ginger Cat...

• Further to my rant about water companies the other week, and their ridiculous hosepipe ban, I recently visited the Middle Eastern country of Jordan, which looks drier than a lizard’s leg. I saw men washing their cars. With hosepipes. I saw women watering their olive trees. With hosepipes. I had a bath in my hotel every night and not one warning was there about lack of the wet stuff. We returned to England during a rainstorm which barely abated for three days. If the water company bosses are finding it difficult, may I suggest they consult Jordan’s leader, King Abdullah, and ask him for a few tips on how to manage their affairs?