I would like to challenge the use of the word ‘dream’ to signify something wildly beyond the speaker’s hope or expectation. It was ‘his dream job’ or it was a ‘dream holiday’ or ‘wedding’ or ‘house’. You name it. I would really like to know what percentage of dreams are uplifting or pleasant.

I cannot recall ever having that kind of dream since my youth, when I regularly dreamed that I could fly. It often involved sliding down the bannisters at home and, as I reached what might be termed the tipping point, I lifted myself from somewhere round the base of my spine and floated high above the grasping hands of those trying to haul me back to earth. Pretty basic psychological stuff there I’m sure – trying to escape from something – which most teenagers and young people are rightly aiming to do.

I’d love to have those brilliant, optimistic dreams now. I’d love to have dreams that involve having fun, lazing by a sunny lagoon, sipping cocktails, picnicking on the banks of a gentle river in the spring – you name it. The things that the word ‘dream’ is supposed to signify.

What do I get? And I do most fervently hope that I am not alone in this. I get what might loosely be termed anxiety dreams that often involve me standing in the wings of a theatre begging the people around me to tell me what the play is I am supposed to be doing, or grabbing hold of people and demanding a copy of the script. Invariably they’re too busy or they laugh and tell me to get on with it, as if I am being tedious.

Very often not only do I not have the right costume on either, but I have absolutely nothing on at all and am running around trying to find my dressing room in exactly the same way as Alice ran after the White Rabbit – with no hope of finding it.

Whereas I used to really hate waking up when I was young and painfully adjusting to the fact that I couldn’t actually fly, nowadays I am delighted to surface and find that I am at home and not facing the derision and scorn of a company of actors.

I suppose it’s all nature’s way of making dotards like myself get up in the morning rather than loll around in bed like our juvenile selves.