No one tried to post a letter in me. When I went into a NatWest, no one pushed an emergency button, thinking I was about to stick ’em up.

My main worry, when a few years ago I spent a week wearing a full burka, with only a small gap in the fabric allowing me to see and breathe, was whether or not some wag might toss me in the air and try to hit me over a net, so closely did I resemble a slow-moving shuttlecock.

And today, at the end of a week when a few metres of black fabric has again been the subject of hot debate, its place in a liberal society batted back and forth by men and women who (mostly) have never worn the damn thing, I thought a reminder of what it feels like inside those folds might be apt.

Liz Jones was challenged with spending an entire week wearing a full burka

I remember during my week catching sight of my reflection in a shop window in Knightsbridge. Instead of seeing me, I saw a woman who was hunched and shuffling. A dark, depressed alien. A smudge. A nothing.

I’ve long felt antagonistic towards women who wear the burka. I would see a woman on the streets of London, a black crow at the side of a husband or male relative, and I’d roll my eyes and tut loudly. I put the rights of women and girls to dress as they please before the rights of people of any particular faith. How dare you demean yourself in this way, I would think as I walked past. You insult every woman who died fighting for your rights and your freedom.

The burka has its origins in the Middle East before Islam, when men and women covered their faces to keep out sand. In Afghanistan, the burka is known as the chadri; it has a thick grill over the mouth and eyes, and is the one I chose to wear. The chadri only became a common sight when the Taliban came to power, banning women from wearing cosmetics, and shoes with a heel: the noise of a heel on pavement was said to be too arousing for men to cope with.

I remember in Kabul meeting former TV newsreaders, businesswomen, who once wore Manolos and lipstick, forced to cover up. They were cowed, mere shadows of their former selves, now unemployed, able only to sit at home.

During my week in the shadows, I soon found out why: there is no way a woman can work in one. Each time I had to go to meet or interview someone, I had to take the headpiece off. I couldn’t even see to type. Most importantly, I couldn’t think straight.

That first day, I was afraid to put it on. When I did pluck up courage, I felt suffocated, as though forced to live inside a dark tent. I got in my car to go to the station and realised there was no way I could drive safely with my eyes blinkered like a racehorse. Already deaf, the fabric snuffed out any residual sound.

On the walk to the station I could hardly breathe. My shroud made me itch all over, and my eyelashes kept banging against the cloth. A friend recently came back from a spell working in Qatar and said that whenever he drove he had to keep swerving to avoid running over the flocks of women who stumble on to roads. ‘They are like children. They have to be guided by men. None of them speak. It’s like the Middle Ages.’

I felt scared, vulnerable.

I walked to the kiosk to buy coffee. ‘Mumble mumble,’ I said to the young man serving. To his credit – the station is in a rural area, so I’m sure this was the first time he had encountered a full veil – he didn’t bat an eye, and smiled. I pointed. I automatically lifted the cup to my lips. Ah. How was I going to do this? I tried to work the cup up the inside of the cloth, performing an elaborate jig on the platform, but got stuck halfway.

Later that day, at a coffee shop in Fulham, I sat outside at a table, faced with a sandwich and a latte. As I weighed up my hunger, an Arabic man shouted abuse at the white, male photographer sent to chronicle my day. I have no idea what he was saying – perhaps I shouldn’t have been eating in public – but the interesting point is that during the entire experiment, he was the only person who gave me any abuse.

Women wearing a burka, clothing that covers their entire bodies shopping at a bazaar

The only time I became furious at my treatment was when, for a domestic flight, I swanned through security unmolested, when normally I’m made to remove jacket and shoes. This smacked of PC pandering. I was heartened, though, that throughout my week I was only ever met with helping hands.

Getting into a cab in London I was still called ‘darlin’ by the driver. Getting out of said cab, a passing decorator opened the door and grabbed my shopping – a burka makes you clumsy, slow, helpless; I spent most of the week feeling like a disabled person.

In fact, the only curious glances I attracted were from small children and my border collies, who started barking like maniacs.

One day, I had lunch with a friend in Primrose Hill. She walked past my table three times. I waggled my Prada bag, which I thought she might recognise.

‘How fantastic,’ she said when at last she realised it was me. ‘You don’t have to bother to put on make-up or wash your hair. How much spare time you must have!’ This was a common response from my much-groomed, often scantily-clad female friends.

I admit, too, this rather jokey response had, as someone who never leaves the house without having had my roots retouched, crossed my mind. Aren’t we in the West equally imprisoned by the pressure to be perfect?

But having worn my burka (it’s still upstairs in a box, like the ashes of a dead pet), I find that attitude naive. Telling women to cast it off, making a joke of how they appear, is disrespectful of those who are forced to wear what amounts to a mobile prison for fear of being beaten, or worse.

You become not just not female, you become inhuman. All through my week I’d worn scent, something I never normally do, so compelling was the feeling I had to be feminine in some small way.

I was supposed, during my sentence in purdah, to wear trainers so as not to expose ‘toe cleavage’, but I got so hot I resorted to flip flops: the steam had to escape somehow.

The burka has its origins in the Middle East before Islam, when men and women covered their faces to keep out sand

The second most common response from Western women was that, thank goodness, at least men won’t leer. Well, this isn’t a problem I face daily. Yes, of course it’s helpful not to walk along dark alleys in a miniskirt and boob tube, but let’s not forget the extremely high incidence of rape in countries where the burka is prevalent. Extreme modesty does not breed safety.

The ridiculous claim the burka protects women from male harassment was wheeled out yet again on Woman’s Hour. A British Muslim woman defended her ‘choice’ because not only did it bring her ‘closer to God’ but because ‘before I used to get men asking for my number, can they have dinner with me’.

I’ve no idea what she looks like but to evoke that response she must be up there with Ava Gardner. She went on: ‘I’m not going to stop because people are ignorant. I have had so much abuse on the train.’

Well, she has obviously never travelled with First Great Western. On my trips back and forth I found both passengers and staff courteous. At one point, after a particularly hot day in Regent’s Park, trying to lick a 99, I wobbled to the buffet car and mumbled for a G&T. ‘Would you like ice with that?’ the young lady asked, deadpan.

Rather than being the brunt of abuse, I felt that by wearing a veil I was the one being rude. I had to keep tucking my hair back, like Audrey Hepburn as she disappeared forever, married to Christ in The Nun’s Story, and started to wonder: what is so disgusting about the female form that it has to be hidden?

On yet another perfect summer’s day in Hyde Park during my week covered up, I saw a crocodile of schoolchildren, aged maybe nine or ten. Several of the girls were in headscarves: only the small moon of their faces exposed. For the first time I knew how they were feeling: different. Hot. How about, too, marginalised, objectified, kept fresh only for the eyes of their male relatives?

After just a few days, what I mostly felt was exhausted. I asked a young Muslim woman who lives Bristol how on earth she coped and she answered: ‘You just have to get used to it.’ I’d rather not, thanks very much.