KEY POINTS:
It's a very worrying thing to discover that the things you've been worrying about aren't the things you should be worrying about.
Last weekend was a classic example. Some of us blokes who've been under a lot of pressure lately to play for the Aussie League team -
until they discovered our great-grandmothers didn't have criminal records - decided it would be a good idea to get away from it all.
So we headed off into the wop-wops for a bit of a break at this exclusive Nudist Club where they don't let you in unless you're stupendously well-endowed.
And here's the thing that will really shock all those people who want everybody to worry about important things.
During two whole days playing Wobble Ball or Dangle Tennis or whatever you call that daft game the nudists love, no one ever mentioned Global Warming. Not once! Ever.
To be fair, this could've been because we had other important things on our minds, like the fact it was so cold that any adoring onlooker wishing to inspect our stunning attributes would've needed an electron microscope.
But that's no excuse. We should've been worrying about Global Warming. Or Climate Change. Or The End Of Life As We Know It or whatever it's called this week.
Particularly since it was all the rage back in the big smoke where absolutely everybody was worrying about it.
Some of the most chilling news about Global Warming came in a Stern warning from Britain which reportedly suggested our kiwifruit should get some swimming lessons because that was the only way they'd be allowed to travel abroad.
This is because of something called food miles which are very wasteful apparently - unlike iPod miles or Adidas miles or flat screen TV miles or French plonk miles or even backpacker miles, if you get right down to it - as backpackers often do.
The bloke who wants us to worry about food miles is an eminent economist called Nicholas Stern, and while the unlettered might think asking an economist to talk about the weather makes as much sense as hiring a Chartered Accountant to rewrite The Kama Sutra, it does appear this geezer knows what he's talking about.
And he's not the only one. Al Gore is very worried about Global Warming too. In fact he's so worried he's whizzing around the world - presumably Gore miles don't harm the environment either - on a crusade to end humanity's wasteful wickedness and bring us, repentant, to the altar of retail abstinence.
He might be willing to let us have one last Christmas, although probably not. Things are far too grim for that. And it's our fault!!! We've caused Global Warming by recklessly making things and buying things and driving things as well.
Mind you, there are a few sceptics who eschew the awesome truth Big Al has revealed unto the people. These agnostics argue that Global Warming is basically a jolly good religion for people who don't like other people buying things.
They say that Nature has simply replaced God in the top spot but, otherwise, it's theological business as usual. There are still commandments (Love thy Environment) and sins (building factories, enjoying life) and terrible consequences (floods, famines, pestilence, plagues, melting ice-caps, rising oceans and a worldwide ban on kiwifruit exports) for all those too blind to see the light.
Scratch the thin Vermeer of civilisation, the sceptics suggest, and you'll find a population still stubbornly medieval in its attachment to superstition, alarm and moral panic.
All of which are greatly encouraged by talk of the world's imminent end, particularly when the only people gainsaying this assertion can be easily dismissed as the dupes of Satan, more commonly known in this day and age as big business and/or George Bush.
Of course, there is another explanation. It could be that human beings are simply programmed to worry about things.
This innate need might go back to the time we were beginning the great journey Out of Africa and heading off to places like Australia which was joined to Asia by a land bridge back then because the sea level was 120m lower than it is now.
(Presumably, somebody will eventually find the fossilised Merc that started all the trouble we're experiencing now.)
Alternatively, the worry gene might have taken root more recently, perhaps 25,000 years ago when the Amazon rainforest was open grassland or the Sahara was a lush and fertile area with lakes and rivers and lots of yummy things for hungry Piltdowns to hoe into.
Perhaps, back then, all the insanely optimistic pre-humans who went charging out of the cave of a morning gleefully thinking "Whoopee! Today's the day I'm going to evolve into a Neanderthal!" got instantly gobbled up by a sabre-toothed tiger, while the anxious few who stayed inside, obsessed with the terrifying prospect of being devoured by some ravenous member of the aforementioned species, concentrated on the rather more urgent business of breeding modern human beings.
In which case, we've likely inherited the worry gene that kept our apprehensive ancestors alive in the first place and the only thing we need to worry about is the fact that we worry about things at all.
Mind you, if we must worry about something, it may as well be Global Warming. At least fretting about barren Fields will take our minds off the dodgy one.
And that should cheer the PM up a bit.