I have seen too many people go half out of their minds with grief because they had a chest infection . . . and then take to the bed with depression because of the effects of the antibiotics. I think I would have preferred it in the old days when people gave birth in fields and dropped dead from consumption cutting turf. Getting on with the business of staying alive until . . . BAM . . . time's up.

Imagine a world before you asked people "How are you?" and they actually told you. The freedom of not having to listen to your whinging friend (we all have one) regaling you with the boring minutiae of her daily ups and downs. The days when you didn't have to worry about the shape of your thighs because (a) they were like moulded steel from walking backwards and forwards to the well and (b) nobody, probably not even your husband, ever got to see them.

We are so bloody precious about ourselves these days. Going to homeopaths and spending 20 on two mls of bottled water for some imagined ailment. 'Stress' is what most of it seems to come down to. And yet, what really have most of us got to be stressed about? Nothing. Stress is a useless modern invention . . . more painful than the Brazilian wax and more pointless than the hostess trolley.

People who are starving or dying don't get stressed . . . they get sad. Perhaps we get stressed to stop ourselves feeling guilty about all the real sadness in the world. Because, after all, you might internalise other people's sadness and that can lead to chest infections! Or depression. Another bandied about term.

Depression is a misunderstood ailment . . . and that is partly because it has become so commonly used to describe how one feels when not on top of the world. Many 'real' depressives remain undiagnosed because they are afraid that their very real symptoms are just them being selfindulgent. The reason for this is because so many of us are, now, self-indulgent about our feelings. We can't cope with the stress of work or not having been hugged enough as a child, so we get 'depressed'. Not depressed enough to seek medical care, or kill ourselves (as friends of mine with real depression have done) but depressed enough to call it 'depression' and garner sympathy and comfort from indulgent friends and family.

I just think this kind of emotional . . . and physical . . . hypochondria somehow takes from those people who are truly suffering. Selfish miserable attention-seekers who used to be told to "get on with it" are now able to take centre stage in our sympathetic, permissive society. Where does the line betweeen genuine hardship and indulgent neurosis end?

If there is one thing in my life I would like to change it is my neurotic nature. My tendency to get het-up and hysterical over problems which do not exist. Panicking over posting letters, worrying about my pension, stressing over wrinkles and wobbly thighs. Modern malaises which were once the hilarious "does my bum look big in this" obsession of my Bridget Jones generation. But the joke is starting to wear a bit thin.