Two little bunnies live in my fridge. They’re doing well considering the habitat is pretty chilly and they’re about six-and-a-half years old. The lifespan of Lindt chocolates, especially when they come under my care, can usually be counted in seconds. This pair are different.
They hopped into my life ahead of Easter 2020 and their glistening cuteness felt important to preserve as the world turned gloomy. In the fridge they remain, remnants of the lockdown age. I never had the heart to eat them and my stomach wouldn’t thank me now if I tried.
Other stockpiled food – pasta, tins of soup and vegetables – were pushed to the back of cupboards but eventually worked through. Now we’ve been asked to stockpile again. Defence secretary Wes Streeting has advised we gather essentials to protect against disruption or disaster in the form of power cuts, fires, floods, cyber – or more old-fashioned – warfare.
Here’s what you need: non-perishable tinned goods like meat, fruit and vegetables (not forgetting the tin opener), bottled water, baby formula and nappies (if applicable), a torch, batteries, first aid kit, power bank and wind-up radio. Enough to get you by for a few days should climate or some other man-made catastrophe arrive. (And if whatever the emergency turns out to be doesn’t do me in, perhaps the very out-of-date chocolate I’ll be forced to eat will.)
Read more:
- How can we sniff out the real news from the bad news?
- How ‘social supermarkets’ offer hope and dignity for people facing hunger
- How to volunteer at a food bank
But if everyone in the country is being asked to prepare for troubled times, what does that look like for the food banks and other organisations already propping up people on the precipice? That’s the question Isabella McRae digs into in the magazine this week, before serving up a platter of people harnessing the positive power of food.
