I have noticed people are becoming a little shifty lately - sort of sidling out of the supermarket hoping nobody has noticed they have just bought 27 litres of sterilised semi-skimmed milk or 18 loaves of cheap sliced bread. Or heaving 56 pound sacks of potatoes into the boot of the car along with copious amounts of granulated sugar.

It's the eclipse, of course. It's finally sinking in that there are only a few days to go and if the expected influx of visitors becomes a reality there are some people who are not going to go without their morning cuppa and piece of toast. They are the sort of people who are always ready for any eventuality.

They keep a sensibly stocked larder and react to situations like the eclipse by topping up their supplies. Use the word 'stockpiling' and they get rather touchy.

I have never managed to keep a sensibly stocked larder in my life. I don't know how people do. Buy things in triplicate and everyone eats in triplicate was my experience. You needed a whip and a Dobermann to keep people out of the larder. Little and often was the only way to shop so consequently there was never more than one meal ahead in the cupboard and enough food to last the day unless you relaxed your guard whereby it was quite possible that someone would use ingredients intended for six people's dinner to make one sandwich.

With the imminent arrival of the eclipse it is beginning to dawn on me that maybe the larder stockers are right. Supposing several million people do arrive and hog all the sliced bread and sterilised milk? A friend of a friend of my daughter's has already said she's heard a rumour that water will run out on the day of the big event, and has begun buying bottled water just in case. I scoffed at that, but perhaps she's right Will I be the only person in Callington who is reduced to sieving newt droppings out of the water in the fish pond to get enough for my mid-morning coffee?

Prior to this piece of intelligence I had already gone over the food cupboard and noted that most of the stock in hand was dry. Dried peas, lentils, chick peas, haricot beans, pasta in various shapes and four sorts of rice. All totally useless if there is no water or unless I could wrestle away some of those little bottles of French lager my son-in-law thinks he is keeping hidden in the garage.

At least I could then utilise the dried food with the ready-to-pick harvest in the garden - shallots, spinach, courgettes and tomatoes - to make a nourishing lager melange of vegetables and pasta, rice or beans.

I will, according to someone I heard recently, have a few rivals in the dried bean department. 'It'll be like that pop festival a few years ago', a woman said in the supermarket. 'All them vegetarians will be coming down and making a mess again'.

Oh dear, poor old vegetarians. Will they be strewing the place with tofu wrappings and soya milk cartons? Running wild on live yoghurt and bean sprouts?

People have very strange ideas about vegetarians. Even now, when it is quite acceptable, whereas at one time anyone who admitted they didn't eat meat were viewed as dangerous reactionaries.

A friend is constantly being asked 'do you eat chicken' on the grounds that it is white and doesn't appear to have any warm blood in it. What do they think it survives on in its natural state?

Back in reality land, I don't think anybody really knows what will happen on Wednesday August 11, apart from the fact that there will be a total eclipse and we will plunged into total darkness apart from a few street lights sometime in mid-morning. And, of course, it is only going to last a very short time. It's not even like Christmas, you don't have to cater for Boxing Day as well.

I had a press release last week from the Inland Revenue, who have obviously been believing some of the rumours that people have been letting out their houses to eager eclipses watches for a small fortune.

It was warning to all of us that should we end up with a nice pile of readies handed over by someone daft enough to pay over the going rate than it has to be declared .

I wish them well - sorting out the odd person who has managed to accumulate a nice little earner from a group of Japanese tourists who booked through the Internet, from all those who have a houseful of non-paying relatives who have eaten all the chipolatas. Perhaps some of us can put a claim in for that although I doubt it.

Having thought a little more about stockpiling, I have decided that should the water go off and the electricity fail the most economical, nourishing and easy to eat food is undoubtedly the good old canned baked bean.

Full of vitamins, beans taste reasonably good cold, you can heat them on a little camp fire and they are cheap.

And, and here's the clever bit, their only unfortunate side effect could be a major weapon in the task of clearing the house of those guests who intend to linger just a little longer into August than we really want.