During the last week has been Britain ravaged by flooding such as has not been seen since the 1940's. I am thankful that we are on high ground, and can't imagine what it must be like to have a metre or more of water in one's home.

I heard on the radio that some people have criticised the government for not setting up a disaster fund, so that people can give money charitably to help those affected, because this is what would happen if the disaster was overseas.

If this had happened overseas, our response may have been through government, or through some of our charities that specialise in such relief. It is interesting to wonder why people perceive a lack of it here. When New Orleans was flooded in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, the President of the USA was much criticised for being slow and disorganised with the relief efforts.

My guess is that, more than complacency or poor administration, a big reason is that we like to think that we are a developed nation, which means that we do not think that we deserve to suffer natural disasters in the way that the developing world does.

Radio journalists have been trying to be creative in their coverage of this event. So I listened to an interview with an architect in Holland who builds riverside houses that will float. He talks of how they now seek to go with the flow of the river's movments rather than to fight it. A response on the BBC Radio 4 website (Michael Pemberton: #21) says that floating houses have also been built by the Thames. Maybe there should be more of them.

It is interesting that BBC News online today has a headline about the flooding, followed by "PM considers 56 day terror limit." Which has the capacity to cause more damage, the weather or terrorists? Or to look at that the other way up, maybe we need to thank God that on the whole our weather is reliable enough that we have some time to think about terrorists....? As the proverbial grandmother says: "Count your blessings."

While I've been thinking about this, my copy of The Week arrived with an extract from the article by Alice Miles in The Times. She too takes the line of "Count your blessings" as she says, "If this is a national disaster, I’m a tomato." (Does she look like a tomato?) So maybe the reason we don't have a disaster fund for Tewkesbury is because our floods are not on the scale of those that seem to happen regularly in Bangladesh.

Yet I would not wish on anybody the heartache and hassle of cleaning up a home after these floods, even if you have a good insurance company. Insufficient mention is given to those whose income has been wrecked by the deluge, such as farmers. So, even if floods are a natural event, I can understand the criticism of the government for failure to develop flood defences to cope with this level of flooding. Presumably somebody in government has made a choice that the probability of this level of pain and suffering does not justify the costs involved.

My journey with the government agency Jobcentre Plus continued today. I had to attend an interview because I have been on their books for thirteen weeks without finding a job. The letter asking me to attend (and listing dire threats if I did not, such as stopping my Jobseekers' Benefit) told me to bring evidence that I had been seeking work.

So I turned up with lots of papers expecting a conversation enquiring about how my job-hunting was going. These were not asked about. Instead, I was told that I had to widen my job search (I wasn't asked whether I already had) and told to choose a job that I wanted from a list of the ten most popular jobs advertised at the Chippenham Job Centre.

I should say that the nearest that there computer could get to my work with CMS when I signed on with them at first was "Office Manager" - not very close really - and I now had to widen my search from that.

Pleas, that none of the jobs that I wanted were on the list, were ignored because of rules that had to be obeyed. I could see nothing about charities, or strategy, or general management, or marketing. Not being attracted at the moment to jobs as a cleaner or storekeeper, the best seemed to be "Local Government Administrator." There then, at a stroke, is my new career. The lady who sought to guide me through this charming process advised me that I should choose this rather than "Civil Service Administrator" because it would be better paid. Maybe I can now apply for a job like the one she has.

Am I mad, or is it everybody else?

This weekend I picked 12 oz of blackberries that were growing wild in a nearby car park.

They were succulent, large, and very tasty - but unusual for July. If this is due to climate chaos they are not complaining; neither did we as we ate them.

Last night we enjoyed a performance of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the picuresque gardens of local Hazlebury Manor, with some friends. The put a production on every year, and there is the opportunity for a picnic beforehand - this year accompanied by Morris Dancing. Happily the rain held off, although none of us were sunburned!

I think this play is one of the most enjoyable, with lots of humour. The "play within the play" was particularly well done, and the opening scene was a cricket match in Corsham (I'm still trying to work out which of our local woods is the magical one.)

Today I returned from a week of sailing off the west coast of Scotland. Excellent sailing weather (winds force 4 to 5, light cloud cover most of the time but only occasional rain); breathtaking scenery; great company.

Sailing with friends, we chartered the yacht from Portway at Craobh Marina south of Oban, and sailed anti-clockwise round Mull, with overnights at Tobermory, Bunessan and various picturesque lochs (Spelve and Craignish). Also passed through the Sound of Iona (which unfortunately was misty, spoiling views!) and visited the islands of Staffa (seeing Fingal's cave from the sea) and Lunga (famous for its bird colonies).

For more photos see my album and also Ken Boullier's blog. Ken has now finished a three month sabbatical, from his work as a parish priest, to gain his Yachtmaster ticket and to explore sailing a way of developing leadership skills and of spiritual retreat. I think he's on the right track!

I enjoyed watching the last episode of the current series of Dr Who on t.v. at the weekend. Mankind, trillions of years hence, finds a disappointing Utopia and then travels back through time to today to kill off its ancestors. (Doesn't that mean that they kill themselves too? That's the paradox.) For them, chasing the dream of Utopia did not work.

So I was surprisingly interested by a radio interview* I found myself listening to yesterday morning. According to philospoher John Gray, the idea of Utopia derives from the Christian Myth that there is a better life hereafter. He sees much death having come from attempts to create Utopia - for example by seeking to enforce a particular democratic vision of Utopia on the people of Iraq. He sees the Enlightenment, a secular movement, dangerously colluding with religion by continuing with the idea of Utopia, which he also sees in Marxism. Instead of Utopia, John advocates his version of Realism: working in the present with the reality that we discover. Fascinating stuff!

In the past there has been debate amongst Christians about whether we should be trying to create Utopia. The usual Christian language is about whether we seek to build God's kingdom now, or whether we don't bother with that because all this will be burned up anyway to be replaced by the "new heaven and new earth." I believe that most Christians see a role in trying to improve the world we live in; but it seems that some are trying too hard by seeking to impose it on others.

All this misses out the perspective of the mystic (Christian and other). That perspective is less concerned with the future, and more concerned with attention to the present, and attention to God. The motto** "All is well" (from Julian of Norwich and others) encourages not the enforced change of others, but a desire to understand others. This sounds like John Gray's Realism to me. Maybe he is a modern mystic.

* BBC Radio 4 Start the Week with Andrew Marr 09:15 - interviewing John Gray with Eric Hobsbawm (historian) and Pat Barker (author). John's new book is Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death or Utopia (published by Allen Lane). For more detail see the review in The Independent.
**A quote from Anthony de Mello in his book Awareness.