A single idea links these entries but I doubt it will emerge with the clarity it assumes in my own mind. The idea is that, in the face of all disbelief, and all expert advice, we should stay alive to our own responses to the world. They are among the best evidence we have.

More than a week ago I was driving over the moor from Chesterfield to Darley Dale in the Peak District, at dusk. It was the last of that mid-February string of exceptionally cold nights and days. And I thought there was something different about the twilight. About 20 minutes after sunset the sky seemed to glow. It was so beautiful: not exactly a colour, for we have seen the colours of sunset before; nor exactly a luminosity, though this came close to describing the difference. But it was subtly and indefinably different: opal-like, and somehow thrilling.

So thrilling that I stopped the car and stood outside, staring - asking myself what was happening. Was I imagining this was something new?

Yesterday a scientist friend from the Netherlands arrived. He is coming with me to Africa. “Did you know,” he said (I hadn't mentioned that dusk), “that some of the lowest temperatures ever recorded in the upper stratosphere above northwestern Europe were registered last week?

“Temperatures were around minus 87.5C; they cause the formation of tiny ice-crystals or ‘pearl' clouds which change the nature of the light. The change was observable around dusk.”

Take your own reactions as a guide. I note, for instance, that there is trouble still in store over the nationalisation of Northern Rock. I deduce this from observing my behaviour - as one might a hamster in a scientific experiment.

I'm surprised to see I've just put all my savings into Northern Rock. I used to keep everything in an Egg account. Egg was big and secure - and who could know how durable those (apparently more generous) deals offered by outrider financial institutions would prove? But a letter from Egg this month informed me that its internet savings rate was to drop from 5.5 per cent to 5 per cent; and Northern Rock was offering nearly 6.5 per cent. And I thought: “Well, if the Rock is to be nationalised, and if there's an implicit guarantee that any other bank in difficulty would be rescued too, then I no longer need to worry about the security of an institution. I can just take the highest rate on offer.”

Something had changed. If this is how I reacted, then plenty of others will be doing the same. Is that what the Government wants - that savers should simply go for the top rate, and cease worrying about how sound an institution might be? That has huge implications for competition in a very big part of our economy. We have not heard the last of this.

How do I know there's a dodgy side to the tax breaks enjoyed by some so-called non-doms? Because apparently I could join them. “You were born abroad,” said an old friend in the world of hedge funds. “You just need to set things up so you can reasonably claim you expect to retire and die abroad; and arrange to be paid offshore.” Well, I won't. But if that's what was offered to me, then plenty of others will be eligible who shouldn't. And all the rest is special pleading.

At around one o'clock yesterday morning, having got home from a dinner and needing to finish some work before leaving for Africa, I found myself at my desk, writing. My London flat is in a solid warehouse, and very quiet. I heard a weird creak I'd never heard before, and felt something shift a bit. Nothing big - just unfamiliar. “A funny time,” I thought, “to be moving a sofa upstairs? Did I really hear that? Yes I did.” Then, having registered the minor oddity, carried on working.

My clock radio woke me at 8.00. There had been a substantial earthquake in eastern England around 1am. The newscaster didn't say it had been felt in London but I knew at once that this is what the weird moment had been. Survival mechanisms programme animals like us to screen out the familiar, and lock straight on to anything, however slight, that is altered or new. It is incredibly reassuring to have trusted a hunch and discovered you were not wrong.

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