The bare necessities...

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife...

                                                                                               - The Jungle Book 

I guess this will happen on a weekly basis - the fridge gets bare and I start having anxiety about how to get food in these COVID times.

We have some limitations on top of the regular 'lockdown' - I think I've talked before how it is recommended for medical reasons that the whole family stay home. But we do have some options for how to get food into the house. The exhausting part is weighing up the pros and cons of all the options. And really, there are mainly cons to all the options. Think about it too long and any interaction with the outside world carries some risk. 

The rational part of my brain knows it is ridiculous to feel this anxiety. People in disadvantaged communities must be rolling their eyes at this current 'rich people food panic'. While I've been fortunate enough to never experience true poverty, I have had the typical student experience of running out of money towards the end of term and surviving on a box of cereal for two weeks. I have also seen food shortages when I visited Moscow for a month in 1997 - shelves mostly empty except for a single cabbage and lines to buy bread by the slice rather than by the loaf.  It was an eye-opener and when I came back to England and saw the supermarkets brimming with opulence, the excess felt sickening.

But this feels different - we are lucky enough to have the resources to buy the food we need and,  if the panic-shopping would stop, there is enough food to buy. My panic is because despite our resources, we can't figure out how to buy food safely. 

I can't imagine how it must feel right now to have lost  a job due to COVID-19 and so have the double-whammy burdens of lack of resources and safety concerns.

Among my friends and family we are not alone with our rising anxiety about food. I have parents, a sister, and friend in the UK all vulnerable to getting really sick from COVID-19 so they have all (finally!) been isolating as much as possible. Ideally they would not leave home even to get groceries. Trouble is - it is now next to impossible to get food delivery from any of the supermarkets and online shopping companies in the UK. Once the lockdown was announced on Monday night, all the systems got overloaded and many supermarkets now say they will only serve existing online customers. I thought my parents would be fine because the garden center/food shop in their village had said it would deliver to the wrinklies. But turns out the shop was deemed too much garden center and not enough food shop - not an essential service - and so were forced to close by Monday's lockdown. Garrrghh! 

I may have come up with a solution. Definitely an impractical, affluent-society solution, but nevertheless a solution. Sunday was Mother's Day in the UK and I was easily able to order some flowers and chocolates for my mother through an online flower/gift company. Given all the hoo haa with the supermarkets it was actually a little bizarre how easy it was. As well as chocolates this company also does lovely fruit baskets, hampers with delicious biscuits, chocolates, exotic teas, children's birthday cakes in the shape of caterpillars and butterflies and so on. If it really comes to the crunch I can just keep sending my family chocolates and cakes!  

Reminds me of a friend whose parents live in France. When I asked how they were doing she said, "Parents are holed up - over 70s must stay home. They said they have enough wine for a few weeks but NO CHAMPAGNE!! They ordered a case but think too late... no deliveries happening now." Then an update a few days later, "My parents have finally received their four crates of champagne they ordered last week (at the beginning of their personal crisis) - thank GOD. Otherwise, they're fine and reminiscing about WWII rationing... " 

The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!  

 Incidentally, this was the typical food ration for an adult in the UK during WWII:

• Bacon & Ham         4 oz
• Other meat            value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops)
• Butter                      2 oz
• Cheese                     2 oz
• Margarine              4 oz
• Cooking fat            4 oz
• Milk                       3 pints
• Sugar                    8 oz
• Preserves            1 lb every 2 months
• Tea                        2 oz
• Eggs                     1 fresh egg (plus allowance of dried egg)
• Sweets                  12 oz every 4 weeks

We have an online food order coming tomorrow, hopefully. I placed on the 15th - how time flies. 

Hey guess what, turns out the chorus is about 20 seconds long! New hand-washing song!

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life


Update:
Just heard from my parents - the Orchard (local garden center/food place) is being allowed to operate to distribute food - my parents are getting it set up.