There are two Buckets of Horror by my desk. Bucket of Horror 1 contains an astonishing collection of computer cables, grommets, firewires, incommunicative modems, silent speakers and mysterious black boxes, many of which go back to the earliest days of the Amstrad, and none of which works.Somehow these wired unmentionables have mated, creating one giant, impenetrable, stringy ball.

Obviously, although I will never, ever touch Bucket of Horror 1, I cannot throw it out. Possibly you have one too, one that requires an entire tack room, where wires can be hung individually on pegs like harnesses and bridles in case of an emergency call-out to the Computer Geek.
Bucket of Horror 2 is much, much worse. After ignoring it for a year until the regular January nightmares began, I have upended it and dumped the contents on the floor so I can sit among them and weep. This stew of semi-masticated paper is my tax return, due in five days or else Gordon Brown will cut my thumbs off. Other people file, but I pile, and pile, until the last second.

"Self-assessment," like other forms of self-abuse, is unhealthy, especially for those of us long estranged from their maths books. Over the years I have grown fonder of letters, distancing myself from numbers, and this has resulted in arithmophobia (though not full-blown hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, which is fear of the number 666, in case you care). Why did they waste time trying to teach us maths at school when Greek or plumbing would have been much more useful?

Anyway, mustn't grumble. I am lucky to have a tax demand, to have a Bucket of Horror 2 filled with receipts and wage slips, but it's further proof that money brings grief.

You probably know that graph which shows levels of happiness growing with levels of consumption, until suddenly the consumption goes stratospheric, and the happiness trundles along at the same level or below. Americans have been getting unhappier since 1960, and the British peak of joy goes back to 1946, perhaps for obvious postwar reasons. Meanwhile, rates of anxiety and psychological illness (more serious than arithmophobia) have been rising despite our riches, or perhaps because of them.

Which raises the question that it might just be a lot more pleasant to live in a "steady-state" economy instead of one of endless growth ­ largely because you could file exactly the same tax return year after year. The Bucket of Horror would be redundant, and happiness would be all around.

Yes, to avoid adding up numbers I've been distracting myself by reading green, Gaian economics. Try not to titter. Gaian economics is about no
longer looking at the world from the perspective of the cowboy expanding frontiers, but instead from that of the spaceman trapped in a capsule with finite resources, only too familiar with his own wastes. It sounds barking, but if Marks & Spencer is chucking £200 million at becoming carbon neutral, it's all going mainstream. Stuart Rose may be our first corporate spaceman.

Of course the spaceman bandwagon is an almost hassle-free one to ride. And sooo fashionable. You may have noticed that wherever possible, stars living in the Hollywood Hills mention their solar panels and Toyota Priuses.
Whether they could handle "steady-state" salaries is a scarier question.
We Gaian economists like to read daggy magazines like Organic Life, printed on paper made from 100 per cent porridge. This month's issue features a marvellous interview with The Baglady, Shirley Lewis, who has made it her mission to rid the world of plastic carrier bags. The photo shows her with mad staring eyes, a hat with flowers, and a flowing cloak made of Tesco and WHSmith bags.

The Baglady, who is Irish, has declared she will live the next decade dressed entirely in carrier bags to highlight waste. UK shops give away 17 billion plastic bags every year - 290 each, apparently. (Not my maths.) Indeed, if I keep reading Organic Life, I may go the way of The Baglady. Now that I'm mostly living in my shed in Cricklewood, nursing my arithmophobia, it's only a matter of time before I take to the streets, wearing a coat knitted from the Bucket of Horror 2 computer wires. I shall be a mad Wired Lady protesting the planned obsolescence of technology. Or I could just get on with finishing this tax return...

kate.muir@thetimes.co.uk

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