THE other Friday I was driving back from filming on the south coast and, having phoned my saleroom during the day, had heard that the rain was coming down in stair rods.

All was well until I hit Gloucester at about 9 o'clock in the evening. There was, as they say, no room at the inn and so eventually I, like many others, spent the rest of the night asleep in my car on a 24-hour supermarket car park.

Now please don't think that I'm complaining because I think I had things pretty easy compared to most.

I had all the essential, and a great many non-essential amenities close by, but while trying to get some sleep, it did get me thinking as to how our ancestors reacted to such crises and natural and other disasters, and how news of such events as great floods, train, plane, shipping and mining tragedies were communicated.

There are few of us I'm sure that have not seen old postcards commemorating such events; topically, the catastrophic flood in 1952 at Linton and Lynmouth on the north Somerset coast, for example.

It occurred to me that this was not at all profiteering at other people's expense but simply a way of sharing news in the days before the many methods of communication that we have today.