It's sometimes hard to get started on a column, but I've never found it harder than today.
How can I write something frivolous, light-hearted?
As I write, people are buried in ruined buildings in Christchurch; others lie dead in the streets.
Still others are simply waiting.
Waiting for help, waiting for news, waiting for loved ones now unlikely to come home - if there is still a home to come to.
I could start with our dusty dirt road that is full of corrugations again, but that hardly seems to matter when Christchurch roads have turned to quicksand and sucked vehicles down.
Perhaps I could boast again about our great new water supply, but that seems more than a little tactless when a city full of people have to queue for a little drinking water and have been told not to shower.
There are the unfinished house renovations; any other week I might go on for pages about those.
But we have a warm and waterproof home with walls, windows and a toilet that flushes.
Who cares about a bit of wallpaper or lino?I've been known to poke a bit of gentle fun at the man of the house, but right now I'm just glad he's home with me, not lost in a pile of rubble somewhere.
I could write about being woken at 5am by a strange noise, getting up to investigate and planting my bare foot in the mess left by our cat who had coughed up a furball and a heap of half-digested cat biscuits beside the bed.
It was a nasty surprise at the time, but not as nasty as having your home or workplace turn into a heap of rubbish in seconds.
And at least I know where my pets are and that they are OK (even if they are moulting).
I could mention the nasty thief who broke a window to get into our HiLux to steal the GPS, but a GPS is just a toy and a broken quarterlight is not even one pixel in the bigger picture of damage.
There's always a funny little story to be told about the chickens, or the sheep.
But it all just seems too trivial to mention at the moment.
So I'm not very entertaining this week.
Life goes on in a safe and cosy sort of way, but all my thoughts are with the people of Christchurch.