LIZ JONES: I exist on a cold, sharp knife edge... even the thought of money or missing out triggers my PTSD

I am feeling slightly more positive. I settled the bill for my kitchen. I paid £500 off my vet bill. Anything to do with money triggers my PTSD. I find it hard to understand why everyone else seems so relaxed. My vicarage backs on to a river, and every day I see women, all different ages, walk past, clad in Dryrobes, about to wild swim. They are chatting and laughing, not a care in the world.

I’m in awe. If that was me, I would be catastrophising, hyperventilating: I might drown. I will have a heart attack due to the cold. Someone will steal my clothes and my phone. Why am I spending time doing this and not working? How do these women afford to go wild swimming? Do they have husbands? What?

There isn’t a minute of the day when I’m not working or haring home from poo picking to work. My main thought each day is that I will miss an important work email. Once, on a Sunday, I was poo picking and received an email to ask me to write about the demise of Jane Birkin, but by the time I had got to the top of the hill to reply the story had been given to someone else. Damn. 

Especially as the writer who replaced me had, when I was made fashion editor of the Daily Mail, told our shared assistant to remove all my show-ticket requests from the fax machine, meaning when I arrived in Milan on my first assignment, not a designer would admit me. And, when we both travelled, working for the same company, to Versailles to cover Dior at the Orangerie, she refused to allow me to share her town car, meaning I had to get a bus. The difference between landing a story and being passed over can be mere minutes. No wonder I exist on a cold, sharp knife edge.

It was ever thus. When I worked at The Sunday Times Magazine, I was always the last to leave. Everyone else had spouses, children. I was too afraid to go home as I was living with my sister, who terrorised me. At the Evening Standard, I would drive to work in order to be in the office by 5am and collect my porridge from the canteen, and wouldn’t leave until 7.30pm, 8pm. As the editor wafted out, she would say, ‘Liz, send me tomorrow’s features list in time for when I leave the restaurant.’ I was on call every Sunday, as I edited the Big Monday Interview.

Anyway, reminiscing about the Evening Standard (I admit it was fun; there was camaraderie, like being in the trenches. I called the scary editor ‘Mummy’ to humanise her, and soon everyone was doing it, even the hardened news guys), I suddenly remembered I underwent a medical to qualify for the pension and a lump sum should I die. And so I email them.

I am sent a form. I fill it in or, rather, Nic does, as I’m scared of forms. There must be some point to working such long hours with not even a loo break. They reply saying I need to fill in another form. And so I have to employ a wealth-management person, who is going to look into it for me. I am due some luck. My Sunday Times pension only pays me £60 a month, which is useless. Why didn’t I work for a bank, or become prime minister? I’d be set for life! Even though I have worked for the Daily Mail group for 25 years, as a freelancer I don’t get a pension, sick pay or holiday pay. But, fingers crossed, if my Standard pension comes good, I might be saved. 

Those endless days, when I’d have to wee in my chair as there were so many pages to fill with Jamie Oliver and his ilk, so many editions, so many wars (I was on duty when the 7/7 bombs went off. I dispatched my pretty young reporter to The Royal London Hospital with an armful of flowers – ‘Put them on expenses!!’ – so she could pretend to be a relative. Me: ‘I want anyone without limbs. Photos. Go, now!’). God, we were ghouls. 

Journalism is not so Wild West these days, meaning a lot of the fun has left the profession. But if only I’d thought less about tomorrow’s front page, more about my personal wellbeing, I’d be less nervous about what my wealth-management person reports back. Wish me luck…