Panic Buying - the rules

Going panic buying this week? Here are some tips.....

Panic buying – the rules

Panic buying often involves people who would not normally go to supermarkets, going to supermarkets in order to stock up reserves of food was the global pandemic rides a pale horse up and down the high Street. This is therefore a guide to those hunter gatherers who are about to conduct such a mission this weekend.

Your aim is to stock foods which will last longer than the next episode of Killing Eve. Do not therefore go to the chiller cabinet and get anything from there. It will have a ‘best by’ date that will not exceed lunchtime so your self-isolation will not be a chocolate cream éclair bonanza. Heartbreaking? True, but we’re talking survival here not the medical equivalent of Christmas week.

You’re buying a reserve. It should only be eaten when you are confined to your house because you actually have symptoms. Being peckish is not a symptom. Helping yourself to a pack of the Pringles that will inevitably form the core of your emergency rations is a bad policy. Where will they be when you actually need them? You can’t eat neat salsa dip

When you arrive at the supermarket you will inevitably be drawn to the kitchen rolls. Nobody knows why this happens but it has two consequences. In due course they will become expensive and unflushable toilet rolls. Second, your trolley will be three quarters full before you’ve even picked up a can of soup.

These days soup is not just cream of tomato, mushroom or vegetable. There is a whole world of exciting flavours out there. Remember you are going to be eating these for 30 days so use a little bit of imagination. Army ration packs used to carry a sachet of powdered mock turtle soup. No-one knew what it was or even what it tasted like because it was instantly thrown away. The turtle population have waited a long time for their revenge.

Whilst you’re in the soup section you will encounter a whole aisle of unwanted Ainsley Harriot products. Apparently people would rather eat kitchen roll than the bizarre assembly of ingredients he comes up with. Lemon and broccoli, turtle and snake venom, coconut and badger – you name it, he’ll mix it. They were going to have a Bushtucker trial on ‘I’m a celebrity’ in which the hapless contestants were force fed this stuff but it was deemed too objectionable.

If any product is over stamped with the words ‘Nigerian Airways war stock’ it will be cheap. Clearly there is a reason for this so hurry back to the mock turtle display and pay the extra pennies. Survival will require many harsh compromises.

Debrettes would do well to put in a paragraph or two concerning the etiquette of panic shopping behaviour when you reach the till. You think that you’re being discreet and that the contents of your trolley do not give you away. The lady swiping your stuff through the checkout knows exactly what you’re doing. Nobody buys 10 cartons of long life milk in the normal world but she will not shriek loudly and declaim you as a panicker. So don’t feel obliged to mumble some feeble excuse as to why you have suddenly taken a liking to Fray Bentos products to hide your shame as to being somebody who can’t keep calm and carry on.

When you get home, £50 lighter in your wallet, assemble your array of insipid foodstuffs and ask whether death might not be a better option than eating this lot for 30 days. Open the pack of Pringles (they only had prawn cocktail flavour left) and ponder how quickly civilisation falls apart.