Sometimes, I just wish the world would SHUT THE EFF UP!

Today was one of those days.

I woke at about 5.30am, as I tend to do these days, and spent 15 minutes trying to get back to sleep before yet again realising the pointlessness of it. The second my eyes are open, my brain leaps into action and nothing short of chloroform is going to knock me out.

What shall I have for lunch? Will I remember to put the rubbish out? What if I do drop off again and miss the deadline to phone the doctor to get myself checked out over after my nasty fall?

What if I win the Omaze house? Do I sell it, rent it out, or live in it? Do I even like Yprkshire? Oh, if only I’d remembered to enter the Omaze house draw and even have those choices.

So, I got up and wrote my next column for the paper, managed to get hold of the surgery, but faced a difficult day as they said I had to go to the Minor Injuries Unit at Barry Hospital, which is three buses away from where I am currently staying.

But first I had to call them so that they could assess my situation. I faced a 26-minute wait and the promise of a callback. After 15 minutes, I decided to risk taking a shower. One minute in, the phone rang.

Standing dripping and freezing on the landing, I faced what can only be called an interrogation. With what sex did I identify? Jeez! I’m a female – look at my damned name and history of painful smear tests on the computer FFS.

What sex was I assigned at birth?

WHAAAAAAT?

What sex is on my birth certificate, the man patiently explained. Look, mate, I have a goddamned whacking great hole between my legs that small creatures the size of water melons can emerge if ever I’d managed to hang on to a bloke long enough to shag me senseless.

I’m an EFFING FEMALE.

So that was the start of my very noisy day: my own voice shouting at myself, shouting at a 12-year-old quizzing me about gender identity and then, waiting for yet another callback for an appointment at the hospital.

I had a glass of wine at the pub while waiting for the second of my three buses. The next stage of my hell began. An old guy singing along at full belting volume to Roy Orbison coming over the speakers.

Bus two was running late – as every woman with a wheeling shopping trolley endlessly discussed. No bus. More discussion. Still no bus. More discussion. I could win Mastermind on my now specialist subject of the number 96 bus to Barry.

Finally, it arrived, and I tried to relax in a seat as far away from anyone as I could.

But what fresh hell is this, as the American writer Dorothy Parker said every time the phone or doorbell rang.

A screaming child of about three, I reckoned, screaming and screaming at a volume where I feared her lungs might burst. And dressed in a princess style dress that mothers inflict on little girls.

Have you noticed how it’s always these damned princesses who are the most badly behaved when out in public? Dress them in sackcloth and ashes – that’ll stop their spoilt delusions of grandeur.

Thankfully, they got off after 10 minutes. But then . . . More singing. ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine . . .’ Over and over again. Twenty-three bloody minutes from a woman bottle feeding her baby but feeling the need to do a very poor Britain’s Got Talent audition while doing so.

I’m sure your baby is your sunshine, love, but if you don’t shut the eff up, I’m going to take that bloody bottle and shove it where the only sunshine is well and truly eclipsed.

I wouldn’t put today up there among the calmest I’ve ever had, but the good news is, I have no permanent damage. In fact, the nurse was mystified I had been sent there at all, declaring that I had minor bruising that had all but cleared up.

I told her about my horrendous journey.

‘Didn’t you have someone who could have brought you?’ she kindly asked.

‘I don’t know anyone,’ I sobbed, tears starting to gush.

‘Oh dear, now you’ll have to do it all again on the way back.’

I pointed out a longstanding mark on my forehead that has grown bigger and darker and asked her to see if hitting my head might be the cause of what I perceived as a new discolouration. She said I urgently needed to get it checked out, but maybe she was just trying to make me feel I hadn’t had a completely wasted journey.

But now I’m worried about that and won’t sleep tonight because I’m worrying about skin cancer.

Therefore, it’s back to the doctor tomorrow, and yet another bus journey.

Don’t talk to me. Don’t sing. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m really not in the mood.

What can I say? I’m a woman.

Got that?