Panic Buying
Written at 8:57 a.m. on 2005-09-13
I wondered when it would happen and now it has. Ever since petrol and diesel hit �1 a litre we've been waiting and finally the road hauliers have announced they will be blockading the UK oil refineries on Wednesday. This has sparked the inevitable panic buying of petrol. Like the muppet I am I didn't fill up the car on Sunday before all this kicked off so by yesterday it had spent 2 days running with the 'You have no fuel you fool' light on. Get to the petrol station, bloody rammed. There was the sort of queue that you used to see for rations during the second world war because people were panic buying fuel. The really annoying thing is it is the old dears who start the panic queues, the ones who drive about 600 miles a year to the supermarket and back once a week. They're all there, in the queue, because they only have half a tank left (as one lady was telling me). Half a tank? Get out of the bloody queue love, at current rate of usage that'll last you till next March so why are you here? Honestly. I don't get why people panic buy because if it goes the same way it did in the last fuel protests then you'll have to have a fuel tank the size of Ohio to ride it out. If it doesn't, fuel will be flowing as normal by Friday since they are only blockading on Wednesday and Thursday. The weirdest thing in the last lot of fuel protests was the panic buying of food. I was in Tesco and people has been told not to panic buy because the supermarkets were starting to run short. One woman had come in with her daughter and each had 2 trolleys. this woman (I kid you not) was buying 40 cucumbers and 20 pints of milk, as well as 3 trolleys full of other food because, as she told the cashier who questioned her, she was 'stocking up' with food for her and her family, all 5 of them. 40 cucumbers? What in the hell are you going to do with 40 cucumbers? You can't freeze them and you have about 5 days to eat them before they go off. 8 cucumbers a day between 5 people? Never going to happen.
People are seriously weird sometimes.
Oooh, and I've picked my wedding dress! Is gorgeous nad I want my wedding to be now instead of next July so that I can wear it!
