Snow

There has been a flurry of snow, the worst this winter to date. It must be something to do with my rapidly advancing years, but perhaps I do not look forward to the snow as much as I did in my youth. Then, I would cheerfully throw on some boots and head out for a walk, just for the pleasure of stomping through the unsullied whiteness and hearing the welcoming crunch under my feet. Nowadays I tend to worry about whether I will manage to get the car out of the drive, and the number of meals I can construct from the contents of the fridge in the nightmare scenario that all the local supermarkets are temporarily out of action; which usually is quite a small number, the meals, I mean, on account of never keeping that much food in the house at any one time.

I am afraid I would be useless in the event of a nuclear war or a zombie apocalypse. Perhaps I should make more effort to hoard large quantities of tinned food and bottled water for just this kind of emergency. Unfortunately, I  am not so very fond of food out of tins, perhaps with the exception of baked beans, or tuna (though rarely at the same time). Especially tinned vegetables: they just don't work for me. But I am probably being too fussy: when zombies are attacking, I doubt you are too concerned whether your tinned potatoes are a smidgen water-logged. The bigger problem is where to do the hoarding: I am not blessed with a cellar, or even that much cupboard space. And I don't fancy stashing tins of sliced peaches behind the sofa or under the bed.

Now that I come to think of it, tinned sliced peaches are rather nice, especially served with tinned evaporated (or do I mean condensed?) milk, but it's not something I have eaten since, perhaps, my childhood. But we live in different times: the world has moved on. Best not to hanker for the past. I suspect if I went out to buy some tinned peaches and evaporated milk (zombies permitting), I would be sadly disappointed.

Cathedral: plenty of storage space for hoarding tinned food.