IT would have been enough to give Dorothy a screaming fit. The photograph on the front page of yesterday's Evening Press of a twister reaching a black and ominous finger down towards Pocklington looked more as though it was taken in the American Midwest that in homely East Yorkshire.

As tornadoes go, thankfully, it turned out to be a very English affair. No trail of wrecked homes and ruined lives in its wake.

No cattle, sheep, pigs, cars or even houses whisked into the air never to be seen again. Not even a date in the Land of Oz up for grabs.

No, this twister contented itself with hovering over Pocklington for a while before melting away into the clouds.

Kevin Keld, the intrepid amateur photographer who captured it on film, admitted the experience had been exciting rather than frightening.

"We were in the middle of a really bad storm, so much so that the thunder was rattling the rafters in the shop," he says. "Then we saw a dark funnel coming out of the clouds, spinning."

Cue panic? No, of course not: this is good old Blighty, after all. "It wasn't touching the ground, so I don't think it could have done any damage," the Evening Press reader adds, with commendable British good sense.

Indeed, so inoffensive was the Pocklington twister that not even the local police seem to have noticed anything amiss - though officers in the town itself did confirm the weather had been 'dark, rainy and windy.'

Toothless it may have been, but the tornado did serve a purpose: it reminded us once more how lucky we Brits are.

OK, so the good old UK may no longer be the richest or most influential nation in the world: but when was the last time we had a natural disaster such as the earthquake which struck Turkey last summer, leaving thousands dead? How many active volcanoes can you think of in the British Isles? And when was the last time our fair land was plagued with drought, famine, war or widespread disease?

A quick look through the press cuttings reveals that nine times out of ten when British journalists use words such as earthquake, hurricane or volcano, we're using them metaphorically: when we're writing about our own country, at least.

The youth whose temper erupted like a volcano, landing him in court; the political earthquake which left John Major's Tory party in ruins at the last general election and handed the keys of No 10 to Tony Blair; the financial markets battening down the hatches and waiting for the hurricane to blow over after a massive one-day drop of 262.9 points on the FTSE 100.

It's a sure sign, when you find the language of natural disaster being used to brighten up news copy in this way, that we know none of these things are ever really going to happen to us. And no, I haven't forgotten the great floods of 1999.

For natural disaster, read war. We Brits are no stranger to war, and Maggie Thatcher built a political career out of her success in bashing the Argies. But war on our own soil - Northern Ireland excepted - is a faint and thankfully distant memory.

Life's not all roses in England's green and pleasant land.

There are fat cats, waiting lists, social inequality and the miserable poverty faced by many of our older people.

But these are all relative: and, anyway, they are problems that, by and large, we ourselves have the power to put right.

The sight of William Hague squaring up to Tony Blair across the despatch box may not be all that edifying: but boy, how lucky we are to live in a land where war means politicians shouting at each-other and an eruption's a display of bad temper.