THE FOUR STAGES OF LOSING THINGS

I lost my wallet this morning. I went through my usual four stages of loss - puzzlement, panic, prayer and pragmatism. Then I found it down the side of the sofa.

Puzzlement is that head-scratching, must-be-here-somewhere feeling. A stage one loss can be very short - even a fraction of a second while puzzlement gets you solving the problem of wher... oh there it is. It can also last longer.

I bet there's a formula that you can use to calculate how long puzzlement lasts before it becomes panic. Panic is stage two and it takes over, sometimes completely. It's panic that gets me upturning shoeboxes and turning out drawers. It's panic that makes me leap from room-to-room and it's panic that makes me clutch my hair in desperation while I sit in a pile of jumpers and paperwork.

I don't know how you calculate the end of stage two. I'd guess there have been studies done that might prove it's less likely you'll find what you're looking for while panicking. I could believe it: you get blinded into a whirlwind. I was glad I live alone this morning.

My brain thunders through the options. Check the car? Drive to Sainsbury's, retrace my steps? Phone my Mum? I turn these options down while I flicker around the flat in a cartoon tornado. Nearly always, my head whispers the 'prayer option' and reminds me that it has 'always worked'.

It has, too. In the end I took a deep breath, switched out of stage two, sat down, closed my eyes and went straight into stage three. I prayed. I'm a little ashamed to say that these stage three 'help-me-find-my-stuff' prayers are probably some of my most sincere prayers. Afterwards, I thought about that a lot.

Anyway, stage three doesn't have to be long. But it does focus the mind. Within moments, my calmed mind was thinking about exactly what I did when I came in last night, and a picture of me with a cup of tea on the sofa came swimming into view. Stage four had already begun.

Stage four, the pragmatic approach is the one that usually comes up with a solution. Thankfully, this morning, the solution was finding the wallet, wedged between the bits of sofa that connect together. But it might not have been that - it might have been phoning the bank, phoning Sainsbury's out of purest hope, or finally asking my Dad for advice.

I slipped the wallet into my pocket, picked up my gym bag and swung out through the door.

'Now then. Where are my keys?' I thought to myself.