IT'S the gut-eating guilt that makes it hard to bear. But that's life when you are an unachieved workaholic.

It means you are on the go all day long, terrified by all the jobs to do and never having the time to get round to any of them.

The time is 6am on Sunday. There's an empty wine bottle still spinning - same number of revolutions as my head - on its side on the kitchen floor. OK, Saturday was a day off, now it is time to catch up. What's to do?

I can't believe I wasted the day when the gutters need fixing, the car needs cleaning, the decanters have to be topped up.

The week's ironing is neatly-tangled - shirt sleeves caressing the smalls - awaiting attention. I'll start it in a minute.

First, though, I want to look at what needs to be done to that window frame. On the way, I spot the shelves I have yet to finish staining and note what has to be done.

All the time, I am thinking about this column and what to write about this week. If our brains are biological computers, my hard disk is full. That's why I've been upstairs twice for my reading specs and each time I've come down with something different.

It's now 7am, the ironing still awaits a good, hot seeing to, but I'll just have another cup of tea while I look out at the garden and decide what needs attention there - later.

The kitchen table is overflowing with the week's mail. I have this appalling habit which drives my beautiful, dutiful wife nuts - I refuse to open any post during the week.

"But, but, but what if it's urgent?" she blurts. "What if I'm away on holiday for the week and not here to open it?" I riposte, smugly.

She is different to me. She has bank statements going back 20 years and I can't find last month's. If the Nazis told her to stand to attention in an orderly queue to await gassing, she would put the Coldstream Guards to shame. Such is her obsessive, compulsive need to be orderly and proper.

Anyway, it's now 8am and most of the ironing is done as I rock around to early Sunday morning radio. It's the God slot on every station and there's a woman vicar talking about the deadly sin of 'sloth'.

"Laziness is taking a rest before you've done anything," says the priest. Phew, I'm exhausted, but the column is taking shape in my head with each strike of my turbo-steam smoothing iron.

Perhaps this week I can get it written before bedtime and banish that old schooldays depression of leaving Friday night's homework until midnight on Sunday.

Excuse me, dear reader, back in a tick. I can hear all the neighbours revving up their lawnmowers for the garden grand prix.

These sad pseudo-Schumachers must have nothing better to do. It's all right, though. The sun is shining hard, it's now 1pm and I swear I just saw a dew drop glistening on the grass. It must be too wet to cut just yet.

Anyway, I've still got that window to paint. But not right away because my dad always said never paint in direct sunlight.

Whether that's because the paint sets on the brush or I'll get sunstroke I've never known, but that's good enough for me.

...Right, back with you. I've scraped last week's chicken fat off the barbecue grill and looked at my itinerary over a couple of lagers.

My obsessive wife has disappeared into the undergrowth with a machete looking for a crashed Lancaster bomber, and she emerges saying there's a tree branch that needs sawing off. I hand her the ideal saw.

I mean, this is the Sabbath, for God's sake, the day of rest. But I still have to stand here and watch the jobs grow faster than the dandelions.

It's now 5pm - the anatomy of a Sunday almost dissected - the column is nearly written and there are lots of jobs still to do.

No matter what I do, I cannot catch up, and for a workaholic that's hard to bear. It's time for a new regime, lots of new resolutions to get back on track.

I'm a failure. I am slothful. Today I've only ironed seven shirts, painted a window, cut - and trimmed - half an acre of lawn, chopped logs, repaired the greenhouse, attacked a jungle and written a column. Must try harder.

What the hell. There's always next week - if it stays fine.

Updated: 10:19 Tuesday, May 25, 2004