Oh no, not another form to fill in. This time it’s the Census, which I completed at the weekend, alerting the authorities to my presence – although why they need to know how I travel to work beats me.

I wanted to write, “I’m trying hard to be green so I take the train, but since you put the fares up I can’t afford it and am going back to my car.”

But none of this important stuff matters to the powers that be, and all I got to do was tick a box.

“How long do you intend to stay in the United Kingdom?” they asked.

The way things are going I’d like to leave tomorrow, preferably for a farmhouse in a picturesque corner of Brittany.

But there wasn’t space to put that, and anyway I’d have to win the lottery to finance it, so bearing this in mind, I reluctantly put my cross on “12 months or more.”

And so it went on. It didn’t take as long as I’d imagined to fill in the form.

Not anywhere near as long as it took to fill in the questionnaire recently sent to me by a market research agency, which I’ve signed up to.

They sent one for my teenage daughter too, after luring us with the offer of £5 shopping vouchers as a thank you.

“Easy money,” I thought.

How wrong I was – the questions went on forever.

Which supermarket did I shop at, how many times, how did I get there, how much did I spend, what did I buy, why did I choose to shop there, what aisle did I spend most time in, did the wheels of my trolley stick, did I reuse any bags, did I have trouble finding my car (yes, always)?

It was never ending, eking out the minutiae of our lives, even down to which type of toaster we use (one that, unless you stand over it and manually eject the bread after a minute or so, produces black, charred toast – just like every other toaster we’ve ever owned).

What sort of wine do we drink? (the one with the lowest price tag and the highest alcohol content) and what sort of pen I used to fill out the form (ostrich feather quill - I mislaid the Biro).

It took hours.

You don’t have to leave the house for your details to find their way onto just about every database in existence.

And you have to fill in the Census – if you don’t someone comes to your house, breaks down the door, orders you to put on an orange jump suit and hauls you away to be flogged.

Or maybe that’s just hearsay.