When I contemplate, after 15 years of working from home, the idea of returning to an office job, there are many thoughts that crowd my mind and demonstrate how thoroughly deinstitutionalised I have become.

Braving the rush hour would take my entire week’s courage allowance. Mustering the discipline to get up and go to bed at sensible times would be beyond me. To have to have lunch at something resembling lunchtime – or to work through, with no lunch at all! – would seem like a brutal contravention of my human rights.

But none of these takes my breath away more than the idea of having to be uncomfortable every single minute of every single day.

Because once you’ve been out of the office swing of things, you see most women’s daily professional rig for what it is: an expensive, time-consuming collocation of more-or-less torturous absurdities. Such as tights. They’re awful nylon sausage skins, and in summer they’re worse. Skirts are restrictive, and often require Spanx. The only good thing about bras is the relief of taking them off when you get home. Make-up and manicures eat into the very two things that work is meant to provide – money and leisure time.

And finally, of course, there are the shoes. I now have trainers I have relegated to the back of the wardrobe for not being quite squishy enough, and I cry (and fall over) at the discomfort of a mere court or kitten heel. How people manage in anything more I honestly do not know. It boggles my mind almost as much as it must boggle their bunions.

“Politicians won’t do it – so it’s up to us to keep fighting workwear sexism”