Switch Off

I'm off to Birmingham tonight for a night on the razz with some old work colleagues. I like Birmingham – it has a strange buzz to it that somehow seems more cosmopolitan than Nottingham. Nottingham's great too, of course, and certainly has more a more artistic feel to it than Birmingham – oh dear, what a contradiction! Maybe I just like cities. I've booked a hotel for the night which although necessary, will probably only get used for a few short hours. That is, of course, if I even get there at all, and the roads haven't collapsed under a deluge of flood water. This weather is getting on my nerves, and such a contrast to this time last year when we'd already had weeks of uninterrupted sunshine (I know, because it was this that made me buy my open-topped car; fat chance I have of using that right now).

I'm a bit worried about my house near Trent Lock. In the great floods of 2000, we were told by the environment agency that we were only two hours away from being evacuated when, mercifully, the trespassing waters began to ebb and we were spared. Here in my city centre flat - high on the hill - I am safe, but over there I perhaps ought to think about moving the fish upstairs. Don't want them escaping.

As it is, the annual Summer Ball at my sailing club – due to be held on Saturday night - has been cancelled. The famous tea lawns upon which the marquees are usually erected have disappeared like Atlantis and, as we often party until dawn and then go sailing in our evening wear for a lark, it would be impossible to launch the boats. I suppose it might have been amusing to see the band playing – as if on the Titanic – with water swirling around their feet, but catching the trays of smoked salmon and champagne as they bobbed by in the blackness might not have been such fun I guess.

Cause and effect – a central theme of Buddhism – is at play here, one assumes. I was disappointed to see John Inverdale at Wimbledon yesterday, cheerfully announcing that he had been provided with a gas patio heater because of the "awful weather", so everything was all right. It's precisely because of your gas patio heater John, that we are having such awful weather. Switch it off man, and put a coat on. When I get to my hotel room this evening I shall turn the television off; not leave it on standby. I always do this. If this were done in every single hotel room, in every single hotel, in every single city, in ever single country – then we'd probably be enjoying strawberries and cream now, instead of sitting here in Wellingtons and a cagoule.

I am so excited to have received my cheque for the poem I wrote that is to be used in the sculpture being erected in Beeston. I've been published before, but this is the first time I've ever been paid for it. So, I am a writer. I wonder if I should start working on my acceptance speech for the Man Booker prize now?