So there we were, myself and a pensioner in the food aisle at Morrisons, staring at the empty pasta shelves and then at each other in disbelief.
The widespread panic-buying hadn’t yet started and it made no sense. Not when there was so much of everything else still freely available.
Then, over the weekend, it started to take shape.
People are losing their minds over the coronavirus.
Stockpiling handwash, for example, is pointless if washing your hands and basic hygiene doesn’t come instinctively to you. It also means you are not protected from other people if they can’t use it.
Where are you going to store all those toilet rolls? What about the elderly or the people who can’t get out more than once a week or a fortnight? What items are left for them?
And why go on a supermarket sweep when you probably have enough food at home to last you around a month anyway?
Growing up in the 70s and 80s my parents improvised with what they had.
Coming from a Caribbean family where a limited wage funded the shopping, the electricity bill, the gas bill and the Insurance Man (!), there were times when light and heat took precedence.
Even if it didn’t, once the food from the weekly shop was gone – it was gone.
Still I’d marvel at the kind of thing my mum and dad could knock up with fewer ingredients than most people had at the start of this crisis.
We could survive on fried dumplings (bakes) and corned beef, soup with meat and dumplings, roti and chicken or rice and peas. Sometimes just a cup of cocoa and some buttered bread.
I’d imagine it was the same in most households, whatever the culture, over the years.
It is certainly the case with thousands of families relying on food banks in 2020, having to think about how – or if – they eat and planning accordingly.
Today’s selfish panic-buying is a symptom of the me-first society in which millennials fear the sky will fall in if their standard of living dips even slightly.
It should be funny, but there is something ever so uncomfortable about it.
