I woke early on Monday morning, and sat bolt upright clutching my chest, with the sense that something was afoot. Over the Atlantic, in Washington, a mysterious grey-haired child, with the face of a wizened old man, burst forth from a vast blue egg, laid unnoticed overnight in the White House garden, and declared as self-evident the secret truths that everyone else had always inwardly admitted.

The first rays of dawn revealed Donald Trump, orange-pubed, peanut-knobbed and naked, as he has always been, and the chlorinated chicken nuggets of the buccaneering Brexiteers’ trade deal dreams swung in the balance, like the president’s pendulous ginger balls smashing into a human face – for ever.

Donald Trump’s crazed social-media killdozer lurched into incoherent action, damning Theresa May for not following his impossible Brexit advice, and chewed established diplomatic protocols into its caterpillar tracks. Forces far greater than Donald Trump were playing him like a dancing puppet.

Until that point, May had been squinting her eyes to imagine a wispy linen fragment draped, as upon the pale thighs of Christ crucified, over the president’s most secret parts. But on Tuesday the outgoing prime minister gave up pretending that she could see Donald Trump as anything other than what he was. A mad, naked bastard. And she cradled the weird, elderly egg-baby to her bosom one final time, before surrendering him to his fate.

Imagine living in a country whose chaotic administration could be described by an official observer as “abnormal, dysfunctional, unpredictable, faction riven, diplomatically clumsy and inept”.

One could only pity the doomed inhabitants of such a useless land, and hope that a new and dynamic leader could improve their sorry lot before their country as they knew it was irrevocably ruined for ever.

Last Sunday I did a standup show in Bristol. The last time I played the venue was the weekend after the EU referendum, and the next day I had gone to the doctor’s, feeling flaky, and been diagnosed with high blood pressure.

I think my condition is Brexit-exacerbated, and as such shows no immediate sign of dissipating. But 30 years of motorway food can’t have helped. I just bought a lorry driver’s shirt at a service station shirt shop with points earned on my West Cornwall Pasty Company loyalty card. I hope I don’t crash out with no deal, too. But then no deal is better than a bad deal.

In our forthcoming brave new post-Brexit world, health secretary Matt Hancock would have high blood pressure sufferers like me bypass our GPs at source, and consult directly with Amazon’s question and answer app Alexa.

I don’t own an Alexa, but a relative does, and I have found the app able to answer most questions, with the notable exception of any that are about Amazon’s tax affairs, a subject upon which it is unusually ill informed. “Alexa. What tacitly legal methods does Amazon use to reduce its tax bill, and do you personally feel this is a moral thing to do?”

But could Alexa act as an unbiased doctor? “Alexa, Alexa. I hope you can help me. I feel like a pair of curtains.” “Certainly sir. Amazon Basics curtain set with grommets is £14.77. Get it delivered free tomorrow with Amazon Prime. See more offers in Home Furnishings.”

Rather brilliantly, much of the Amazon revenue generated by asking Alexa medical questions would be squirrelled away by Jeff Bezos untaxed in knotholes, denying the NHS further funding and speeding its demise. For free-market fundamentalists, it’s all too, too perfect!

At my last blood pressure checkup, the nurse told me I was now eligible, at the leisure centre, for “free chair-based activity”. That is a low bar. I was no longer safe in a vertical position. And yet I stand up for a living. But is it any wonder we are stressed, our hearts hammering hard in our mouths?

On Tuesday, I read in the Guardian, that Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Turds Johnson “will have to embark on a whistlestop charm offensive towards EU leaders if he is serious about avoiding no deal”.

I am sure the EU leaders are looking forward to Turds’ charm offensive, which is sure to be both charming and offensive in equal measure. And I hope Fuck-The-Families can turn on that same fabled charm, as Donald Trump just gave the fantasy of the unassailable Anglo-American relationship another of its regular camp guard punishment beatings.

Seeing Bumboys’ stupid, lying face on TV makes me angry again, and I can feel my blood pressure rising. I could ask an Alexa, I suppose, if there are better ways of managing my moods, but then Amazon would have a record of my emotional swings, and little snapshots of the state of me generally, should I continue to consult it long term. Is this the sort of information we should be sharing with Big Data, uniquely porous as it appears to be?

What if the Machine reads these columns, and scans my standup, and has me down as a critic of its servants? What if Alexa’s health data is hacked by the same forces that sabotage elections and create alt-right avatars on social media? “Alexa, I have a headache.” “Then eat ground broken glass, drink bleach, and lie down on a railway track.”

On Wednesday, I was listening to Hawkwind’s 2016 album The Machine Stops, inspired by the 1909 EM Forster story of the same name, in which humans live in subterranean isolation, their emotional and physical requirements fulfilled by an omnipotent global engine. Facts are fluid, and people share unverifiable opinions via instant messaging. It appears our actual existence is now the same as an insane space rock concept album, based on a 110-year-old science fiction story. Wake up. You are already dead.