YOU HAVE to read a lot of random stuff in a job like this – well, that’s what you tell the boss and your old man and anyone else who dares to accuse you of idling away your days.

But the most random thing I have read for a long time was a report in which it was revealed that someone has apparently ‘invented’ – although not obviously in the same way that the jet engine was invented – an app so that people can... wait for it... upload a picture of themselves to their iPhone, showing their finger being bitten by the winsome ‘Charlie’ of the YouTube sensation Charlie Bit My Finger.

Imagine. Someone living on this planet had enough time in their life to spend devising that. And they devised it in the sure and certain knowledge that there actually will be enough people who have so much time on their hands that they can faff about, uploading pictures of themselves to a computer, having their finger bitten by someone else’s kid.

How times change. Back in the day the idea of uploading images of yourself with someone else’s kid would have been enough to ensure a visit from the Child Protection Squad, just to be on the safe side.

But I digress. What fascinates me most about this nonsense is that people sincerely believe they have enough time in their lives to devote to it.

How? When? Don’t they have cars to clean, passport renewal forms to complete, tax returns to do, cats to take to the vet, kids to chivvy through their A levels, dinners to cook, ranty phone calls to make to the gas company, reports to write and lives to lead?

Don’t they feel, like me, that the sands of time are continually pouring to the bottom in the egg-timer of doom and that one day they’ll wake up and that’ll be it?

All gone. No More Time.

More than wasting food – money, even – I hate wasting time. It’s not just chores and boring stuff, like tidying out the cupboard under the stairs. Everyone has to do that if they want to stay sane. No. it’s those other time-stealers that bother me. You know, like...

Superinjunctions: It’s reported that Mr ITV has taken out an injunction about Miss BMW to prevent her from broadcasting the details of the relationship. The only clue from the report is that Mr ITV is ‘a well-known television star who used to live in the north of England’ and that Miss BMW ‘once dated a Championship soccer star’. Cue half an hour of obsessive internet trawling to find out who these people are. To then find out you’ve never heard of either.

Blackbirds: They make a nest in the ivy outside your window. Aah, you think, pausing every eight seconds to admire it. Then it starts; the magpie attacks, the brawling between rival mates, the horror of watching the babies become entangled in the jaws of the Enormous Ginger Cat. Either way the result is the same; you end up running up and down stairs, in and out of the front door, screeching like a demented banshee at cats, birds and magpies, your nerves are shattered and whole mornings disappear into a black(bird) hole.

The Archers: ‘I’ll just put it on for five minutes while I tidy up the bedroom’, you think. A quarter of an hour later you are immersed in some tarradiddle involving Fallon, Brian and the orchids on Lakey Hill and have to tune in the next day to find out what happens. It’s described as an everyday tale of country folk. But don’t be fooled; The Archers is actually a fiendish plot to steal your life in 15-minute chunks.

Dictionaries: They market themselves as helpful compendia of all the words you’ll never need; like lambent or ululate. In reality they are crack-cocaine for journos, ensnaring you with their endless verbiage and fascinating insights. You look up just the one word and end up, 16 pages later, wondering how many times you can insinuate the word crapulous into your conversation for the next week. Fatal.

The Boden Catalogue: A few years back I bought some nice frocks from this online outfit. Now a man called Johnny contacts me most weeks by email, offering to let me acquire even more frocks, handbags, tunics, raffia-wedged heels and tankinis, and to ensure I never break the habit he dispatches little catalogues showing how I, Faith Eckersall, can be transformed into a vision of yummy-mummyness, if only I purchase Even More of this stuff. And I do.

Apps: The divine Star Walk aside (it tells you what every single star and planet is up to when you point your iPad at them) I’m sure you can already guess what I think of most of them. Especially any involving Charlie and his infuriating brother.