Every trolley at the supermarket today, except ours, had multiple packs of toilet paper in them - ours had none, having bought our normal, sensible bulk pack a month ago, which I expect will last another 2 months. WTF is up with people. If there was a dysentery epidemic making its way towards us it might make some sense. Do other people live hand to arse on the quantity of toilet paper they can afford to keep on hand?
Also, the now normal completely empty pasta shelves. Do people think that massive carbohydrate intake is the cure? That Italy is about to enter the apocalypse and we'll never see real Italian pasta again? That a cupboard groaning with pasta is going to be anything but pure survival rations if you don't at least have a few vegetables to go with it? Will I be making a fortune in a few weeks selling my home-made pasta sauce through the soon-to-be fortified bars of my front door?
The new feature is the empty rice shelves. Again, a remarkable unpalatable diet if you have nothing to go with it.
The flour shelves seemed quite heavily depleted too. As if Joe Public has a clue how to make bread or pastry.
Yet, there were masses of fresh fruit and vegetables on the shelves. Stacks of potatoes. Enough salad for 2 hundred BBQs. Two cows, three sheep and about twenty pigs worth of meat. Enough cheese, milk and butter to feed a regiment for a week. None of the shops freezers looked anything other than as well stocked as normal - meat, fish, pizzas, ice cream, complete frozen meals, pies, pasties, the full range of frozen potato products and vegetables.
Even the canned goods had hardly taken a dent. Quite a lot of tinned tomatoes gone (but I could still get my regular two tins of my favourites). Baked beans perhaps at half stock. Soup, beans and (yuck) canned vegetables untouched.
In fact all the food items for sale were at normal stock levels apart from those already mentioned.
Is the nation planning to live on pasta in rice gruel while they sob into their huge stack of tissues and toilet rolls?