Approximately four days in the future, to be exact.

Try as I might to fine-tune my psychic frequencies to perceive exactly what will tickle your fancy on a Thursday (at the moment all I'm picking up is Capital Gold), there is always the chance I might be a bit out.

I might make a quip about Britney, say, eating a packet of lemon and scampi Nik Naks, oblivious to the knowledge that by the time you read it, Britney will have died in a freak Spandex accident.

And lemon and scampi Nik Naks will have been discontinued again. And thus I will lose your respect as a writer with her finger on the pulse (relevant and hard-hitting reporting something I usually achieve so well). You can see the pickle.

Forgive me, then, for starting the next sentence with the cautionary staple 'as I write this'.

As I write this, we haven't had the hurricane yet. I am poised and ready, hatches battened down, emergency food supplies waiting (three tins of economy beans and a Fox's golden crunch cream), practising the age-old British national hobby of 'bracing myself'.

I am fully braced, wearing some chequered trouser suspenders, a foam neck brace and a dental retainer I stole off a 13-year-old.

I am also, though perhaps I shouldn't admit it in case you are reading this on Thursday with your kitchen around your ankles, very excited.

We're getting some proper weather!

Real, slightly scary weather, involving the possibility of delayed trains, uprooted trees and witches whizzing past the window on pushbikes!

The grumbling potential here is enormous!

Even in London, where real weather has been done away with in favour of the triplet palate "too cold but no snow", "too hot but no sun" and "meh", are we being treated to the sort of sloshy wet wind that turns us all into elderly ladies, wont to walk bent over double with plastic bags on our heads and gripe happily to strangers at bus stops.

I am perhaps more excited than you, for two reasons. Firstly, because I slept through the earthquake the other week, and haven't entirely shaken off the suspicion that it never really happened and timesonline.com were having a joke at my expense. I am owed a bit of danger and excitement.

I want a good disaster story to tell people at dinner parties, should I ever go to any.

Actually, I always miss exciting meteorological moments.

The family Bravo famously managed to spend the whole duration of the '99 total solar eclipse in a shopping centre in Eindhoven, only to emerge an hour later and ask when the whole shebang was starting.

As I remember, it wasn't even a good shopping centre.

Secondly, I am excited because I missed the last good hurricane, my parents' selfish lack of foresight meaning I was only a foetus at the time and so can't even pretend to remember it.

I saw no flying sheep, I was granted no blocked-in-by-fallen-trees sick day, I have no reason to judge Michael Fish as anything less than a competent and reliable professional. I am bitter.

So consequentially I have a lot riding on today. I plan to get in the mood by wearing a gingham dress, listening to Bob Dylan and maybe putting something heavy in front of the house to hold it up, just in case.

Like, another house, if I can find a spare.

My first hurricane-endurance trip will be to the corner shop, just to make sure they're still selling lemon and scampi Nik Naks… unfortunately, as I write this the sun has just come out.

I suspect I'm going to be disappointed.