There was more anti-war junk than spam in my inbox this week. The majority of my correspondents entreat me in earnest to sign anti-war petitions in Spanish, or rally at Embankment at noon on 15 February, or chain myself to a tank, or click to see George Bush turn into a chimpanzee - not, let's face it, such a startling transformation.

Showing signs of battle fatigue, the subject bars announce: "more war stuff" or "just what you wanted, another e-mail about war". One came with instructions: "Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag. Squeeze out excess air and seal. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written: 'If your enemies are hungry, feed them. (Romans 12: 20) Please send this rice to the people of Iraq, do not attack them.' Place the paper and the bag of rice in a stamped envelope and address them to Tony Blair."

There followed a crumb of history: in the 1950s, the American Fellowship of Reconciliation showered President Eisenhower with rice and, they say, persuaded him not to attack China.

Why did I like this one? The recipe-ish instructions, with their goodwifely, quilting-bee tone, evocative of Martha Stewart before the fall? Maybe just the image of our Prime Minister flailing in a torrent of rice on his Downing Street doormat, like the bad guy who drowns in a silo in the film Witness?

I got halfway to the kitchen cupboard and remembered that I had decided not to protest this one, having parted regretfully with pacifism when Iraq invaded Kuwait. So I returned to my desk and sent the thing on, with a new subject bar: "Rice Is Nice".

Is Eminem a better poet than TS Eliot? Bryan Appleyard has said so. Most of the time, I disagree utterly with what Appleyard writes but would defend to the death his style of writing it. When he kicked off this idea, however, I took notice.

Being a trustee of the National Academy of Writing, described as the Rada for writers, I was in the market for inspiration for an event at a literary festival. Eminem v Eliot looked like a natural. My fellow conspirators agreed, but we had one problem. Who would speak up for Eliot? Andrew Motion and David Hare have both come out for Bob Dylan in the past. Last year, when we organised a series of lectures under the title "Adventures in the Writing Trade", the poets' event ran to a spat between Roshan Doug, who declared that certain Pink Floyd lyrics were pure poetry, and Sean O'Brien, who dismissed these as psychedelic garbage but claimed true poetic status for the Elvis song Mystery Train.

If there is a poet out there who dares to look uncool in public, would he or she get in touch?

To promote a book in these media-saturated times is to wade through a moral morass. The author struggles to decide how much of which soul to sell, and to whom? The publicity for my new novel was a tap-dance through a post-feminist minefield. I had chosen to write about a friendship among men, five men with nothing in common except they're still playing in their student R&B band and they're facing the big five-O. Or rather, not facing it, as guys do.

Media responses divided sharply on gender lines. "I want you to make all the middle-aged men in Broadcasting House squirm," instructed a woman radio producer who was, I later discovered, in the last day of her contract. The researcher on ITV's This Morning warned, "Philip got really cross about this in conference." She spoke, of course, of Philip Schofield, once acclaimed as the only children's TV presenter in history who was definitely cuter than his puppet.

Now, I had intended to take a tough line with this book, declaring that I had been compelled to write a riotous comedy about the male menopause because the truth is so tragic. I was all set to denounce the midlife male as a beast as ugly and vicious as a rhinoceros with sinusitis. But, in the end, could I bear to distress these gentle creatures? I could not.

I recalled the wisdom of Sharon Gless, Cagney of the vintage American cop show Cagney and Lacey: "Talk tough and wear pink." I had no pink, but I had a Visa and the sales were on. Soon, I had an angora sweater in a reassuring shade of cyclamen, the perfect cloak of intellectual invisibility. In a fluffy pink sweater, I discovered, a woman may talk about the madcap exploits of andropausal politicians and meet with nothing but smiles of relief from all the men in the studio. "It's not about you guys," I said, "it's the other guys causing all the trouble." And they believed me.

The snow transformed London from a Blade Runner nightmare to a living Pissarro and, for a few hours, turned adults into children - especially adults new to our so-called climate. A South African friend leapt out of bed at 4.30am, thrilled by the challenge of a Great Trek into the office through the frozen streets. At my daughter's university, students from Hong Kong and Kenya stood still in wonder on the campus lawns, trying to catch falling snowflakes on their tongues. Was there even a snowball fight out there on the M11?

Daring poets, please e-mail celia@celiabrayfield.com

Celia Brayfield's new novel, Mister Fabulous and Friends, is published by Time Warner (£6.99)