"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" Such, I imagine, will be the expressions of joy throughout Whitehall (which I also, it appears, imagine to be staffed entirely by fans of Jabberwocky) at the news that they are to be granted permission to work from home this summer in order to take pressure off themselves and the public transport system during the Olympics and Paralympics.

I understand the impulse to exult. When I worked in an office, during endless temp jobs and as a trainee solicitor in the city, it was my greatest, fondest, most golden dream to be allowed to work from home. Imagine – no commute! No watchful authority figures! A cup of coffee whenever you feel like it, drunk at a leisurely pace on your own sofa instead of knocked back at your desk! No commute! No office politics! No commute! No wearing of uncomfortable shoes, tights in the summer or skirts ever! And no commute!

Now, having made the leap from solicitor (I qualified on a Tuesday, left on the Friday) to freelance journalist (via more of the aforementioned office temping jobs and a stint selling books in Waterstones), I have been living the dream for about eight years. And like most dreams, it has turned out to be something of a nightmare.

If you are working from home, you have essentially been released from prison on your own recognizance. This makes you, naturally, deliriously happy for the first few days. But then reality – aided by a few irate phone calls from your boss wondering why your tributary of reports/documents/ articles to the river of company output has slowed to the merest trickle – kicks in and you realise while you have gone away, the office hasn’t and that the work still has to be done.

Working from home is a nightmare