WHEN will all those highly paid members of our government get it into their heads that making an appeal to the public not to panic buy whenever there is a crisis is just about the best way to get the public to panic buy?
I'm quite sure that the words ' panic buy' act as a kind of Svengali instruction sending hundreds of people rushing out to buy half a ton of sausages. And oddly enough they don't just buy the things which might be in short supply, they bung ten kilos of sugar, 14 loaves of bread and as much sterilised milk as they can load into their trolleys. Weird!
It occurs to me that the old fashioned small town grocery shops which have all but disappeared would not have allowed panic buying. Had you tried it you would have been kindly but firmly told that you didn't need a dozen loaves of bread and enough sugar to rot the family's teeth for a year because you only had three people in the house and your granny was going away on her annual holiday to Clacton at the weekend anyway.
Such was local knowledge. And if you weren't a regular customer you would be lucky to be served at all.
I was thinking the other day when I wrote about childhood pets that I didn't really mention dogs. I do like dogs. Not perhaps as much as cats but I miss having a dog and one day when I'm old and grey, or older and greyer unkind people might say, I shall have one again.
We didn't have dogs when my grandmother lived with us because she had once had a nasty experience with an Airedale. I never quite found out what, it was probably no more lurid than an ankle bite but she always implied she was lucky to be alive and have a jugular vein in one piece.
The first dog I ever owned was when I was a junior reporter and had been sent to the RSPCA office in the town where I was working to do a story about abandoned Christmas pets and arrived just as a large woman dragging a small scruffy child was doing just that. Abandoning a Christmas pet.
He was large, something like a sheep dog and had appealing eyes. Spotting a soft touch the woman, and the RSPCA assistant, told me he was a lovely dog, wouldn't hurt a fly and was only being re-homed (pet owner's speak for abandonment) because the family were moving to a one bedroomed flat in a tower block. I was not yet old enough to realise that all abandoned pets won't hurt flies, have no vices to speak of and are always being re-homed because their owners are moving somewhere high up and small.
I should add here and now, and to avoid a curt letter, that I'm sure the RSPCA or any other animal rescue organisation are far more careful these days about re-homing pets. I think you need a pristine CV to get one, and a jolly good job too.
Anyway, I fell for the tale and, so to speak, the tail which was large and very waggy and took him home. Next day I left him with my mother and he ate the sofa.
My mother was not best pleased but we managed to re-stuff it and the next day I left him again and when I got home he had eaten one of the stair risers, a small piece out of a fireside chair and the doormat.
He was a perfectly amiable dog, friendly, playful and delighted to have new owners, and new furniture, to lavish attention on. I began to see why his previous owners were moving to a small flat, their remaining furniture probably looked silly in anything bigger.
My mother gently pointed out that in another week we wouldn't have anything left to sit on so the dog would have to go. Actually I think she yelled 'either you get rid of that bloody dog or you can move out with it'. Understandable when she had just found half her needlework box had been munched up.
Luckily the young man next door worked on a farm and he asked the owners to take the dog. We walked him up next day, and when we reached his new owners he immediately transferred his full attention to them and was happily shown where he would sleep. In the hay barn. As we left he was eyeing up the rafters with a thoughtful gaze. We were told later that he was an excellent sheep dog. I wonder how many of the creatures were found to be missing chunks of wool though.
My next dog had to wait until my children were small and then we got Teddy the Peke, or Teddy the Terrible as he quickly became known. I have written before about the exploits of this small delightful bundle of white fur, who sadly was the Saddam Hussein of the dog world with a main aim in life to leave tooth indentations on everyone he met and bomb Iran when he had a spare afternoon.
Dearly loved by the family, he was dearly hated by the rest of the world and our house was boycotted by everyone from close friends to the postman. I once overheard a dustman shout to a colleague 'If that little furry white b......is in the garden leave the bins'.
We got so worried about Teddy that we actually spoke to an animal psychologist. Now I'm not the sort of person who would normally dream of speaking to any kind of psychologist, but he worked for my husband's paper and the consultation was free, so it was worth a try.
The consultation wasn't done at first hand, nor first bite, and the man never actually met Teddy (he had obviously heard of his reputation) Basically he felt that Teddy wasn't really a vicious dog he just had an over developed sense of protection towards his family and needed to be reassured that anyone approaching us was not necessarily dangerous. I felt that this explanation was not going to go down too well with the milkman as I prised Teddy off his leg ' my psychologist says he's just got an overdeveloped sense of family protection and he's not biting you because he personally dislikes you'.
After Teddy came a golden retriever called Beauty who had no vices at all, and all the virtues. She loved, and was loved by, everyone; with the possible exception of the cats who soon realised that they had to swallow their food in double quick time or this large golden new arrival would swallow it for them.
Over the years I realised Beauty didn't think of herself as a dog, she displayed no interest in other dogs at all, treated the cats as if she was an older sister and they were irritating but much protected siblings , and wanted to be, and was, involved only in family activities.
For the whole of her life, and she lived until she was 16, she was never left out of anything. She went to the pub, she went on holiday, she was the first in the car for a day out. Her occasional naughty behaviour, such as jumping into any water even if it was off the quay in Looe, eating all the strawberries off the plants in the garden, finding and consuming a whole carrier bag of Christmas chocolate, were mere little hiccups.
Above all, she behaved with impeccable good manners to everyone, loved visitors, especially those who had food on them, and welcomed anyone who called. While Teddy the Terrible used tooth and claw to defend his family and would cheerfully have dismembered anyone who set foot on the garden path, Beauty would merely have tried to lick them to death. When I get another dog I know which sort I'll be choosing.