I heard the news today. Oh boy.

I heard the news today, oh boy. Sales of toilet paper have gone up by 23% since last week, as the government prepared to bring in measures to slow down the spread of COVID-19. “Oh shit,” I thought, although that really should read “no shit” since there might not be enough toilet paper…no, let’s not go there. Perhaps, people are literally shitting themselves?

Sales of flour are on the way up, too, as people seek to avoid instant death by baking more bread and I fully expect the hand sanitisers to be sold out in a matter of minutes.

That supermarkets will not close, even when we go into the coming national lockdown, does not appear to register with the panic brigade. Even when over a thousand people were dying each and every day, you could still go to Sainsbury’s for essentials such as alcohol. I was certainly more concerned about the wine shelves when I visited my local branch than my fellow shoppers who were desperately trying to cram as many bog rolls as they could into their trolleys. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have gotten into a brawl if people were filling up their trolleys with all the wine on display. But happily, I never needed to.

I am not going to pretend we didn’t order a few extra bits and bobs during lockdown. I bought the odd extra tin of tomatoes or red kidney beans and I have stocked up on corned beef, as you do. But I did not join the marauding hordes in the bog roll aisle.

My friends abroad say that the state of panic that consumes folk during a lockdown was not confined to this country. Far from it. I’m told by friends down under that anything we did, Aussie panic buyers did ten times worse than we did, to the extent that some were literally fighting over a pack of Andrex. It didn’t get quite that bad in our supermarkets, although that might change when the pubs are forced to kick out at 10.00pm.

Still, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Just wait until we leave the EU single market and the customs union in the hard Brexit prime minister Dominic Cummings is so desperate to see. People won’t so much be fighting over what to buy, but fighting through crowds to see if the supermarkets have anything on their shelves. We can’t complain, though. It’s literally what we voted for.