I’m into power napping. Be it on aircraft, trains or more recently, behind the wheel of my car, whilst waiting for the lights to change. Some people simply should not be allowed out unescorted and I’m seriously beginning to consider myself as being part of this ilk.

An incident I recall when travelling to London involved one such power nap. I’ll be honest here, one thing I’m not is an elegant sleeper (in fact I wish someone would be kind enough to discreetly cover me with tarpaulin). I startled awake, flailing wildly in the quick, gasping, suddenly alert way of all people who have lived through an African war. From my chin to my belt buckle I found myself mired in a cobweb of drool. Three people were gazing at me in a curious dispassionate manner. Instantly I recalled another public humiliation in Hungary - a public bus, me waking to find three snot-nosed open-mouthed kids staring at me. The memory of them fleeing in terror at the discovery that the dribbling hulk was alive immediately caused me to emit an insane chortle.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do (without any evident difficulty) that are pretty much beyond me. I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone looking for the lavatory in a cinema, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door. Whilst in NYC earlier this year I went through a spell of returning to the hotel’s front desk two or three times a day and asking what my room number was.

Something else I don’t do well is taking instructions from my GPS. Even if I’ve never been to a place before I am of the resolve that I know better, which of course I don’t and invariably leads to arguments.

Another thing is sophistication- I could never be accused of that. You have no idea how I ache to be suave - just once in my life I’d like to rise from a dinner table without looking as if I have the dogs dinner on my lap; or drive off in my car without leaving ten inches of coat outside. I cannot wear light-coloured trousers as I always find that at some point in the day I’d either have sat in chewing gum, brushed up ice cream or been splashed with motor oil.

But getting back to the power napping scene at the traffic light – I tried to explain to the policeman (a stick of a man that looked as if he’d not smiled since 1960), that I had not been drinking and that I was not driving under the influence of a narcotic drug. “On the contrary,” I exclaimed, “this is possibly due to caffeine deficiency.”

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