Anticipating the Big Dump
England is bracing for the Big Dump. The news and weather shows us that a band of snow is moving inexorably southwards, sweeping down from the north like the glaciers did. The pictures coming in from Scotland are grim, and not the usual grim of social depravation and the sort of dental hygiene only a lifetime of abusing irn-bru can bring. No, the news has decided to ease off on the pictures of jolly people enjoying snowball fights, people swimming in pools and seas where the temperature makes your testicles retract into the roof of your mouth (not somebody else’s, that’s the plot of ‘frozen fun V’) and have instead gone with pictures of people trying to dig their car out of a snowdrift, dig their house out of a snowdrift or, if they are anything like me, dig a path to the shed where the leftover Christmas booze has been stashed.
Danger arriving from the north has obviously sparked some sort of ancestral memory. On the way home from work I stopped at my local mini-mart (a soulless Sainsbury’s that, two weeks after opening, had managed to ensure that the excellent Budgens in the high street closed, leaving us with a much narrower selection of crisps and other corn based snacks. Indeed the only plus point of the store is the ridiculously cheery staff, who always ask how you are and how you day has been – this is a bloody high risk strategy as I always have to remind myself that the chap on the till does not necessarily want to hear a forty minute monologue on the inequities of my train operating system, my constant battle with fuckwittage (some of which, admittedly, is my own) and the million petty miseries and triumphs that make up modern life. Hence, I always answer ‘not bad, how are things with you?’ and, to be fair, he always gives a cheery answer although I am braced for the day when he either says ‘I need a hug’ or says something that sounded like ‘great, I killed a fox with a hairbrush last night’, leading one to have to make an instant decision about whether to ask for clarification or just nod, say ‘great’ and hope that he actually said ‘great, I booked my holiday for summer last night’, because otherwise the next time you see him he’s going to want to talk about bludgeoning garden pests again.) to try and buy some anchovies.
It looked as though the hoards of Gengis Khan had been through the place. The shelves were bare of stock and I expected to hear ‘pony poo clean up on aisle five’ coming from the tannoy at any moment. With no fresh food on the shelves and no anchovies to be had, I panic bought red wine and headed home.
Panic buying is, I think, a very English thing. Foreigners have a different system, they just oil and load their guns and start to figure out which of their neighbours is the weakest and has the best stocked larder. The Scots are able to forage in the wild, in the highlands this means stalking a deer (which does not mean trying to befriend it on facebook) while in the cities it’s rather more along the lines of shuffling to the nearest pie or chip shop. This means living on chips. This is normal. The Welsh, of course can live off their own body fat for weeks and failing that the body fat of any English tourists they have waylaid.
I think in part it’s due to supermarkets now being open twenty four hours a day. People go into some sort of meltdown at the prospect of not being able to visit the shops at three in the morning to by aubergines, or an X Box.
Luckily, I still have a selection of food (and some back-up booze) left over from Christmas. It does present a challenge trying to pull together a meal from what is basically a cheeseboard, pork pies and some nuts, but I find that if you eat all that while pondering what to have for dinner, the urge to cook something vanishes.
Now awaiting the snow.
Danger arriving from the north has obviously sparked some sort of ancestral memory. On the way home from work I stopped at my local mini-mart (a soulless Sainsbury’s that, two weeks after opening, had managed to ensure that the excellent Budgens in the high street closed, leaving us with a much narrower selection of crisps and other corn based snacks. Indeed the only plus point of the store is the ridiculously cheery staff, who always ask how you are and how you day has been – this is a bloody high risk strategy as I always have to remind myself that the chap on the till does not necessarily want to hear a forty minute monologue on the inequities of my train operating system, my constant battle with fuckwittage (some of which, admittedly, is my own) and the million petty miseries and triumphs that make up modern life. Hence, I always answer ‘not bad, how are things with you?’ and, to be fair, he always gives a cheery answer although I am braced for the day when he either says ‘I need a hug’ or says something that sounded like ‘great, I killed a fox with a hairbrush last night’, leading one to have to make an instant decision about whether to ask for clarification or just nod, say ‘great’ and hope that he actually said ‘great, I booked my holiday for summer last night’, because otherwise the next time you see him he’s going to want to talk about bludgeoning garden pests again.) to try and buy some anchovies.
It looked as though the hoards of Gengis Khan had been through the place. The shelves were bare of stock and I expected to hear ‘pony poo clean up on aisle five’ coming from the tannoy at any moment. With no fresh food on the shelves and no anchovies to be had, I panic bought red wine and headed home.
Panic buying is, I think, a very English thing. Foreigners have a different system, they just oil and load their guns and start to figure out which of their neighbours is the weakest and has the best stocked larder. The Scots are able to forage in the wild, in the highlands this means stalking a deer (which does not mean trying to befriend it on facebook) while in the cities it’s rather more along the lines of shuffling to the nearest pie or chip shop. This means living on chips. This is normal. The Welsh, of course can live off their own body fat for weeks and failing that the body fat of any English tourists they have waylaid.
I think in part it’s due to supermarkets now being open twenty four hours a day. People go into some sort of meltdown at the prospect of not being able to visit the shops at three in the morning to by aubergines, or an X Box.
Luckily, I still have a selection of food (and some back-up booze) left over from Christmas. It does present a challenge trying to pull together a meal from what is basically a cheeseboard, pork pies and some nuts, but I find that if you eat all that while pondering what to have for dinner, the urge to cook something vanishes.
Now awaiting the snow.
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