I should know better

We`ve been beseiged by storms and hurricane force winds, and I have been cowering under the goosedown duvet listening to the wind scream and the rain pound. I keep reminding myself that the old house has stood a lot of these - it withstood the storm that took down the Tay Bridge, after all.

Indeed it has been standing a long time. It has been traced in legal records as far back as 1680,when it changed hands, dwelling and ground, for "seven pound Scots." It came into the Hamilton estate as part of a dowry in the nineteenth century, and was bought out again after the war. It was "modernised" - running water and electricity etc - fifty years ago. Before that the warm room with the vaulted ceiling where I am sitting was home to Daisy and Clover, two Clydesdales who worked timber, light came from oil lamps, and water from the well just across from the front door. That front door is five feet eight inches high - when the stone was cut to make that lintel few Scots were taller than that.

But life here is older still. Just before the First World War, an excavation here turned up bronze age celtic stone heads. People have liked to live here for a very long time.

That`s reassuring after a few days like the ones we have had. Yesterday I got up and went to the gate to look down on an inland sea that wasn`t there before. The river has spread everywhere, all over the bird sanctuary (which will delight the swans) and downriver to the towns. Floods everywhere, and I am quite relieved that I now don`t have to travel to Leicester on Monday.

Instead, like my laptop, I will be hibernating.