Opinion  

For once it's not the travails of Mrs Colon's helminths that haunt me, but my own imagination. Tomorrow I fly to LA for a course - I try to imagine stepping out of the airport into glorious sunshine, slipping on my inline skates and gliding effortlessly downtown wearing my guitar on my back and flowers in my long blonde hair.

I recheck my online reservation for the twelfth time (do they really know I'm vegetarian? This is Air France) then on impulse look up my hotel, only to find that eight out of nine people gave it one star because it has fleas. The ninth person feels that there is much to be said for a room with no windows and a mirror on the ceiling.

I decide to change hotels, but now I'm edgy and head downstairs to practise the guitar. This doesn't help. I am the very worst guitarist in the world, and my rendition of California Dreamin' is painful in its inaccuracy. I may be arrested for impersonating a Californian hippy. Badly. After all, I am not blonde, and my bottom is black and blue from my last attempt at inline skating.

Did I mention I'm convinced that I will be gunned down on landing in LA by rival gangs pursuing a turf war around ownership of inline skate lanes?

I email my insomniac friend who's just had a hernia op - but he calls me Woody Allen then allows the nurses to drug him to sleep, with some excuse having just had an anaesthetic but I could tell he feels I'm doomed.

I try emailing a Nigerian man whose late aunt (a professional embezzler) has left him several trillion dollars that he unfortunately cannot access without my help. Unaccountably, though, he only wants to talk about my bank account, so I check my life insurance instead.

Is this a GP thing or just me? Is it a requirement of the role that we can never quite let anything go, and must imagine all possible scenarios before we select (in my case) the least likely? If I get home safely let me know. I always email back. Even very late.

Dr Selby is a GP from Suffolk.

Email her at GPcolumnists@haymarket.com.