FOLLOWING this week's natural disaster we had a quick head count in my family to make sure everyone was still alive.

What do you mean, 'What natural disaster?' The first snow fall of the year, of course.

On Monday morning rooftops across East Lancashire were coated with a light dusting of a white, powdery snow. But the way people were going bananas about it, you would have thought it was cocaine or asbestos falling from the skies.

Traffic ground to an instant halt like there were cute kittens hiding under the snowflakes and drivers were refusing to run them over.

The work-shy were busily calling their bosses to explain that they couldn't get in.

Yes, as usual it was chaos.

All the 24-hour news channels on the telly were suddenly broadcasting from "coldspots" up and down the land.

Tell me this, if the weather was so bad, how did the news crews get there so quickly?

What a joke.

Some snowdrops fall and everyone starts creating like it's the last days of Pompeii.

I wonder if the dinosaurs were wiped out by meteorites after all?

Maybe it was a particularly squally snow shower? You get my point. In the olden days, this snow stuff used to fall from the skies and cause mild inconvenience.

Now it has transformed into a white scourge that wreaks havoc in our lives. It's the new plague.

I don't know when or how this happened.

But it's another example of how...well, pathetic, I suppose, we've become.

Somebody said to me recently that we don't have heroes anymore - we just have sports stars and celebrities.

Try naming a genuine, modern hero about whom we can tell fantastical stories.

Once you rule out Annalise from Neighbours, who managed to hurt herself jumping in a pond on "I'm A Celebrity..." you're left with nothing.

Can you imagine if they tried to set the Old Testament or Ancient Greek mythology on today's world?

Well, Noah wouldn't have needed to leg it from a great flood for starters. But he might have ducked out of the way of a puddle.

And we wouldn't need fantastical beasts like the Cyclops or Gorgon to do battle with. A cracked pavement, perhaps, or over-officious parking warden is more like it.