Autopilot journalism

Clearly this is a sign of ageing, but it seems funny how the past couple of weeks have rushed by even more quickly than usual, and yet I struggle to remember what I've been doing. My diary's not much help, as many pages for the last two weeks in November are completely blank - yet I presumably did something on those days.

Fortunately my body responds to industrial quantities of hot, strong coffee and slowly the cogs start to turn. The diary's blank pages are flood stories. Remember the floods? If you live in the affected areas, I'm sure you do. But if you don't live in or near Mevagissey, Lostwithiel or St Blazey, you could be forgiven for asking "which floods?" - not to deny that they happened, but because heavy rain and consequential flooding are becoming routine elements of the Cornish seasons.

As an easily-bored short-attention-span reporter, I struggle with "routine" - although of course there is nothing routine about the threat to life or damage to property. Threat to life and damage to property are definitely news and demand to be reported. There are also genuine new angles to explore, such as planning and insurance issues.

I guess it's all about proportionality: my antennae is tuned more finely to the implications of biblical-scale mega-death flooding in Pakistan or China than soggy-but-insured bridal gowns in Lostwithiel, which in any event were for display purposes only.

Last weekend. What was I doing last weekend? Again, my diary is no help. Got it! I was reporting on the St Austell Carnival! The one that wasn't cancelled because it wasn't affected too badly by the flooding. Actually, no carnivals in Cornwall were cancelled because of the flooding. "Triumph over tragedy" is a well-established journalistic formula - but usually the formula does actually require a tragedy.

I think my difficulty is that with weather stories, once you move beyond reporting what has actually happened, you need every ounce of imagination and creativity to keep the story going. I have a further difficulty: there are lots of other stories which need no such life-support, but which do need space in the bulletin.

And now I suppose I'm in for a week of snow stories. Or maybe a week of "it's not snowing but we're still jolly excited" stories. Groan.

Snow can disrupt travel. It is news, for a while. But life goes on. If it snows it will no doubt bring inconvenience and irritation - and that's just for me.

Don't get me wrong - when the weather disrupts normal life, local radio excels as a genuine public service. Everyone works extremely long hours to broadcast information which most listeners find very useful. And I know that it has to be done. It's just that I find it hard to be genuinely interested and a week later I've forgotten all about it.

I dare say my BBC bosses will read this and despair. There's probably a correctional training course to re-adjust my editorial antennae.