Caught short! The toilet paper crisis.

A lazy start to Saturday, late breakfast at the local garden centre, then off to the supermarket for a bag of mixed nuts and a copy of New Statesman magazine, but that’s where the pleasant start to my weekend ran slap bang into the bummer of other peoples’ Armageddon.

I couldn’t park anywhere near the supermarket, not on the car-park, nor in any of the streets nearby. I tried again, later in the day and managed to park this time. The supermarket didn’t seem too busy by then but there were murmurs of disapproval among customers and the shaking of heads. Then this old timer turned to me and he said: “Does this Coronavirus thing give you the runs too?”

“Em,… not so far as I know, mate.”

Together we stared bewildered at the empty shelves. Indeed there was not a single pack of toilet paper to be had, no Paracetamol either, and of course no hand-sanitiser, these being the very items the media – social and otherwise – have been advising us to panic about. Paracetamol and hand-sanisiser I sort of get – though if everyone would just calm the hell down there’d be plenty to go around – but toilet paper?

It’s impressive, how our technology can spread a groundless panic right around the world, have it go viral, so to speak, faster than a spreading virus. Impressive, yes, but in a bad way, and clearly it’s true what they say about smart-phones: they just suck your damned brains right out of your head, and replace them with marshmallow.

Anyway, I finally got my nuts and my New Statesman, picked up a bag of coffee beans while I was at it then drove home to ponder the ins and outs of things. Fortunately I’m okay for toilet paper, got a box of Paracetamol too knocking around at the back of a cupboard somewhere. Don’t like that hand-gel stuff – gives me the creeps actually, but that’s another story. Then I got to wondering if there was anything else I should be panicking about, wondered about checking online – you know: Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Daily Mail for further instructions. Lion bars perhaps? I’ve got five in the cupboard, create a scare, wait till folks are fighting over them then sell them at a tenner apiece? No,… don’t you dare.

But to those who have taken part in this appalling worldwide scrummage for toilet paper I’d just like to point out, you might be feeling pretty smug right now, all sitting pretty on your thrones tonight, laughing at the losers left to wipe their bottoms with dock-leaves. But let it also be said your surplus is in inverse proportion to the size of your self-awareness as human beings, and there’s only so much of a stockpile of quilted-velvet a person can acquire without looking really dumb. And I imagine it’s difficult to wipe your arse with it anyway when you go around all the time with your head shoved so far up where the sun never shines.

Maybe we’re no worse than we’ve ever been, maybe it’s been like this since the dawn of time and there’s no sense in bleating on about it, but can we not show some love for our fellow man, and share out the damned bog paper like decent human beings? Or are we really so full of shit we think we need to keep it all for ourselves?