RIGHT, I've bought new boots, have plenty of blankets, batteries, tins of beans, bags of rice and enough candles for a vigil in Trafalgar Square. We have a bunker full of coal and a garage full of wood.

I am ready for winter.

Weathermen are promising us the coldest winter for at least a decade, with icy winds blowing in from Russia, sending temperatures plummeting. They are promising snow, ice, power cuts and traffic chaos. Oh what larks. So we can't say we haven't been warned.

But will we take any notice? Probably not.

Now we eat strawberries in December and think we can ignore seasons and weather.

True, the seasons have been remarkably strange lately. Mild winters, storms and flash floods in places that never had more than a puddle. We had violets in our garden before the snowdrops. Lots of last summer's plants never stopped flowering and now people are reporting apples and apple blossom on the same branch. Omens and portents if ever there were.

So maybe a harsh winter, a proper old fashioned winter, might sort it out - kill a few bugs and beasties too. If we can cope.

Who prepares for winter anymore? It used to be a matter of stocking up on coal and candles, thick jumpers and tins of food. But we've gone soft and careless over the years. Give or take the occasional jumper or stripey scarf, we wear pretty much the same clothes all year round. We no longer wake up to frost on the inside of the windows. We have central heating to keep us warm, air conditioning to keep us cool. We can have parsnips in July and peaches all year round.

We're lucky in our house. We have a real fire and a gas stove, so can survive quite well, even by candlelight. But if you live in an all electric house, you are spectacularly vulnerable. Think blankets, think picnic stoves, think portable gas heaters. Think now, before there's six feet of snow outside the door and you're stumbling around in darkness. At the very least, store your insurance documents somewhere high and dry and get a new pair of wellies.

Apart from an occasional cancelled barbecue or soggy fete, we think the weather doesn't affect us any more. Think again.

Just tell that to the people of New Orleans or Kashmir. Or Carlisle. Or the North York Moors. Or everyone who thought they were snug and dry and woke up to find their furniture floating.

We cannot control the weather. But the least we can do is prepare for it. Time to make a shopping list.

ROSA Parks was a middle-aged black woman - about the lowest of the low in Alabama in the 1950s. But when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus, it was just the catalyst needed to get the civil rights movement rolling into action all across the US.

Rosa Parks died last week, aged 94, a national heroine.

Don't ever think that one person can't make a difference. Rosa Parks proved otherwise.

Published: ??/??/2004