I HAVE a recurring nightmare. I have had it since I was about 12.

In it, I am walking through a Derby council estate, shouldered by hundreds of my friends, my family, people from school and people I recognise from town. Everyone I know.

It’s like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but with fewer rats.

We are walking to an unknown destination, in a village called Spondon, and it is just starting to go dark.

As the sun goes down and the street lamps flicker on, I start to realise I’m getting lost.

The streets don’t look quite right. It’s getting late. I turn around to ask for advice from my friends, but they are starting to disappear.

It gets darker and I start to panic. I turn a corner and look around helplessly. I am under the only streetlight and everyone has gone. At this point I usually wake up with a jolt.

It’s a psychoanalyist’s dream of a dream, I’m sure. Even to the layman it’s fair to assume that I hate being lost, and I’m not keen on being deserted.

However, in my first week as a trainee at the Wezzie Gezzie I realised this was something I would have to get over.

My editor told me: “I need you to drive to Walney and interview David Cameron.”

I said: “Where’s Walney?”

He replied: “Up north. Here are the keys to the work car.”

“Where’s Walney?”

“Call us when you get there. Good luck!”

“...okay?” Gulp.

Since then, I’ve been lost driving round almost every village and town in Cumbria, and a good few in north Lancashire and North Yorkshire. There have been times when I have felt like I’m going to die in a field and be eaten by a sheep but, up to this point, I have always got to my destination in the end.

And so, after two years of getting lost in the name of reporting, I have decided to embrace my fear.

This November I will land alone in Mumbai, in India, wearing a massive backpack and standing in a country I don’t know.

If I can survive that, I can survive anything.