When in doubt – PANIC.

Whenever there is some kind of panic, be it weather, earthquake or plague the first instinct seem to be an urge to empty supermarket shelves.

Here in Ireland the obsession seems to be bread. Now I haven’t experienced a bread shortage since the Great Snow of ’82 but there seems to be an urge deep within the Irish psyche to grab every last remaining loaf. At the first whisper of some kind of event, they’re off filling their supermarket trolleys with sliced pans.

Now unless they have gigantic freezer cabinets they will have to develop a taste for green moldy slices, as bread doesn’t last very long. Herself likes a slice of toast in the morning so we get through one slice a day. I now buy half loaves as Herself bitches like mad if there is a hint of green and blue wildlife on her slice [she’s very fussy]. I used to try my hardest to scrape off the fluffy bits but she always somehow knew.

I suppose there is some logic in grabbing bread, though my preference would be to stock up on whiskey and baccy. Man cannot live by bread alone, but it helps.

But then I look across the water, and what are they stockpiling? Fucking toilet rolls! Why, in the name of God? Toilet paper? Do the Brits expect any snowstorm or lurgy to give them explosive diarrhea? They don’t care if they starve just so long as their arses are clean?

I suspect it goes back to their childhood when their mammies told them to always put on clean underwear when going out “as you never know when you’ll be hit by a bus”. I always imagined if I were hit by a bus then I would have more pressing thoughts than whether my pants were clean or not [and having been hit by a bus I imagine I would have crapped myself anyway?].

On the other hand, maybe they have the idea that when they pop their clogs they can be wrapped in toilet paper and mummify themselves?

Or maybe their impending doom gives them an urge to write their life stories?

Weird?