Rather trembly, old thing

Some things are described as "Very British": self-deprecating humour, bad teeth, and a tendency to say the wrong thing then dig oneself boofusly into a deeper and deeper conversational hole, in a bumbling yet endearing fashion. Other Very British things include: rain; pubs; fish & chips on the beach in the rain; not doing very much exercise; lying in the road drunk at the weekend (in the rain) or on any night of the week if you're on the Med; a wryly cheery approach to adversity, but not in a heart-hanging-out, over-sharing kind of way.

Crap natural phenomena are Very British. Our fair isle does not do climactical extremes. Our most devastating floods do not wash away entire villages and wipe out swathes of the population; rather, they ruin the carpet and provide newsreel of vicars sailing hilariously in rowing boats to pluck dogs from the top of gateposts. High winds do not kill, destroy and flatten; but they do make your journey up the A556 a real pain in the bum, what with that fallen tree blocking the road.

Last night we experienced a Very British earthquake. People from LA and Japan would have slept through it- in fact, it probably would have sent them to sleep. I dreamed that someone was shaking me. It lasted a few seconds, we woke up, G went looking downstairs to see if we'd be intruded upon by a giant vibrating burglar, and then we went back to sleep (after I'd inexplicably and urgently whispered did you check the kitchen? as if the food processor might have come to life, swelled to ten times its size and set itself to max power, thus causing the house to shake).

In other parts of the world, whole sections of the planet are cracked in two, stretches of road are crumpled and buildings toppled. People build special wobbly buildings to absorb the catastrophic quakes.

The headline on the BBC News website this morning? "Chimneys Topple In Large Tremor"

This does not stop people from appearing in newspapers staring balefully at cameras as they stand next to their fallen-down shelf, or telling reporters that their cupboard doors swung open most alarmingly during the "quake".

My favourite post-earthquake comment, courtesy of the news this morning: "It was hell".

Melodrama = not Very British, dear.

And yet, as one of my colleagues remarked in a dry and Very British way this morning, tomorrow we'll probably be out filming the "survivors" of the Great Quake 2008.