ABSTRACT

What keeps us awake at night? Not vampires, werewolves, witches or zombies, creatures safely conned

to the worlds of ction. Perhaps an irrational paranoia summoned by eeting thoughts of human monsters: serial murderers, spree killers, ideological terrorists; all anxieties born of the feeling that one day we might simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe more abstract concepts: failure, loneliness, disease, irrelevance, death. But how often do such thoughts cause us to lose sleep in comparison to the creeping dread that accompanies anxiety brought on by the economic terrors of everyday life: those unwanted reminders of household bills, loan repayments, looming expenses, dwindling bank balances, distant pay cheques and the petrifying prospects of debt, unemployment, homelessness and starvation?