Is it just ME?

Or should women daydream more?

WHO doesn’t like a waking dream, fantasising, letting the mind stray? Last week, a survey tried to find out who does it most and got some surprising answers.

Hairdressers, IT workers and artists admit to the most wasted hours. Farmers, childcare workers and, for some reason, people in Nottingham are more likely to get on with it.

But the real surprise was that men are the most idle dreamers. They admit to wasting two hours and 51 minutes a day, while women idle for an hour less.

The suggestion that men fantasise more than women is interesting, especially since some of them think it’s us who are impractical romantics, mooning around and trying out our names with the surname of our latest crush. (Look, we all did it at school. It’s all over the exercise books.)

It turns out that once we grow up, men daydream more. Do dignified lawyers, even judges, drift off as they imagine being the Stig from Top Gear, or roaring down the Cresta Run?

Do bank managers fiddle with the office stapler while dreaming of being heart surgeons, or swoop their suit jacket over their shoulders as if it’s the cape of a superhero?

I rather applaud it. Thought is free. Fantasy is seed-corn for real achievement, even if it is a small and unrelated one.

Stuck at home on chemotherapy for the past four months, I have indulged in mad dreams myself.

And I wouldn’t like to think women deprive themselves of it, too busy with the coal-face jobs of work and family to dream.

Certainly I daren’t reflect that maybe the reason men kept the upper hand for so many centuries is that they gave themselves time to dream big, and we didn’t.

Stuck at home on chemotherapy for the past four months, I have indulged in mad dreams myself