I HAD hoped for a quiet Christmas, and had planned it that way, too. To the astonishment of my office and family I took a day off before Christmas and had organised a short break between then and the New Year, to be followed this week, by a good chunk of time in Blackburn before Parliament returned on Monday.

And it was quiet, too - until the small hours of Boxing Day morning. Unaccountably I woke early: went to the kitchen, made some tea, switched on the news. The phone then rang. It was the Foreign Office.

The initial reports were bad enough. An earthquake reaching 9 on the Richter scale - the radio said there had not been one of this power for 40 years. Many, many were bound to be dead. Many more injured.

But I doubt if there was anyone in the world who, when the news first came through, comprehended the full dimension of this awesome natural disaster.

But it was plainly very bad news. By the time the office had called me the 24/7 Foreign Office Response Centre had mobilised the Rapid Deployment Teams (RDTs) we have on standby around the world.

These teams, and other disaster arrangements were put into place after the experience of September 11, 2001 and the Bali terrorist atrocities (October 2002) to ensure that extra staff and equipment could be rushed to disaster areas where there were British casualties, to ensure that we could offer the best possible service to British nationals abroad.

And it is not just these disasters which have prompted the upgrading of our response, but the fact that "globalisation" means that millions of Britons for whom a trip to Spain once seemed exotic now think nothing of travelling half way around the globe, to places like Thailand and Sri Lanka.

At the same time as deploying the RDTs abroad, we also opened our UK Casualties Bureau, run in co-operation with the Metropolitan Police Service.

Scores of police officers and civilian staff were called in from their holiday. The Bureau had to cope with record pressure. On the Tuesday (December 28) it received 40,000 calls from worried friends and relatives - compared with daily average of 25,000 '999' calls for the UK as a whole.

When I'm due to be in Blackburn, I'm now just landing in Jakarta, capital to Indonesia (but I'll be making up my time in town next week).

Here I'll be attending a meeting, chaired by President Yudhoyono of Indonesia on what the international community can do to assist the massive reconstruction effect now required.

I'll then go on to Phuket and Bangkok to look in particular at the work of British officials and police with the bereaved British families.

Our staff have responded magnificently. But, with the best will in the world, given the scale of the disaster and the vast area over which it is spread, difficulties are bound to arise where they have. I have tried to ensure that they are sorted out sensitively and quickly.

Alongside the grief we all feel for the victims of this appalling disaster, many of us in Blackburn have felt a very strong personal sense of loss at the death on New Year's Eve of Jack Bury, a stalwart of local politics and the borough and county councils over decades.

Jack was a former postman who seemed to know everyone - care about everyone.

He was a true Blackburnian renowned for his straight talking. Especially in my early years as an MP he'd often give me some robust advice.

It was always wise to follow it! I will really miss him, as will his family and the whole of the Borough.