NO, I'm not callous and oblivious to world events. It's just that, owing to the logistics of weekly publication and public holidays, last week's column was in its place well before the tsunami wreaked havoc along the coasts of South-East Asia.

The diary I mentioned last week says little of the social side of Christmas and new year, and doesn't hold secret whinges about feeling like death - the common cold always having effects out of all proportion to its status as an illness. There's just grief at death tolls rising day by day and horror at the size and speed of what we used to call inaccurately "tidal" waves.

Now an estimated 5m survivors need help, a million of them desperately - even that figure may be overtaken by further investigation and disease before this reaches you. And it is on the survivors that we must concentrate.

The initial response worldwide kicked into gear, in cash and kind, with ordinary people in this country pouring in money as never before, but it is a disaster greater than any seen since countries were able to learn of each others' troubles and send help.

It is also a natural disaster. No terrorists, no landslides caused by rapacious loggers, no tinpot rgime failing to prevent it, no moral or political baggage at all, so nobody's response need be tailored to international politicking.

Great as the goodwill and efforts are, getting aid quickly to the right spot isn't easy. In many places the infrastructure - all vital services including roads, bridges, power and water supplies, rail and telecommunications links - went with the inrush of water.

Clean water, food, shelter and medication are the short-term needs but we must look at the very long term, and not forget after this first rush of sympathy.

No-one could admire those who were straight back on their towels on beaches not far from victims' bodies but, if you have a holiday already booked or planned in the region this year and your tour operator says: "Go ahead," do go. Tourism is the main industry for so much of the area and affected countries are appealing for tourists not to desert them.

The will to fight back is there. Bars and restaurants hit by the waves in Patang had somehow spruced themselves up to re-open for new year. Paradise isn't lost, just doggedly being reclaimed.

Money will be needed when the tsunami live on only in survivors' nightmares. Carry on fundraising. Money means that goods and services can be bought as locally as possible, helping more than gifts in kind.

Have an economy day each week (see soup recipe below) and put the saved housekeeping into a tsunami fund at home or with a church or club group. Get together with friends to sell at a table top or car boot sale; run a 50p a copy magazine swap in women's groups. But please do something.

It must, however, be an extra effort, or Darfur and its like will suffer, but it's possible. The whole thing made me feel I've never started a new year quite so rich, in every way.