Don't panic Mr Mainwaring

Well haven’t I been tardy in updating my blog? No excuses really other than that I have had my head down working away at this and that.

With all the news of the tanker strikes yesterday, came a telephone call from Shosh last night to say that she had not been able to get any petrol due to people panic buying in most of the local garages – some of which had shut due to having run out of stocks. She had driven to Walsall to stay with her fiance’s mum and had, in fact, been using public transport for two weeks to and from the PDSA in Wolverhampton.

She has been on two weeks EMS there and was having to get back to London for college on Monday. According to the news you read and hear, there is not supposed to have been much of this panic buying going on, but last night she told me about one particular garage they had been queuing at where a woman filled her car up and then was, together with a friend of hers, running from pump to pump filling up extra cans with the stuff in a great state of agitation. Why? Who did this woman think she was to actually perform such a selfish act? If that had been me, I would have a) taken her registration number and reported her to the police for carrying such a load of hazardous material in a private vehicle and b) would have confronted her to ask what the f*** she thought she was doing? And why did the garage let her do it in the first place? The only fuel left was the expensive variety and Shosh, being a student (who, with her choice of studying to become a vet, has to have a set of wheels in order to travel around the country to spend weeks at a time on EMS and sometimes get to farms if the vet has already gone on ahead), has to count the pennies, and could not afford to fill up with this choice.

Anyway, eventually Gav and her went out again to try and get to the motorway services to see if they could get some fuel there – only having a quarter of a tank left meant they could not go too far. Happily, they passed one of the ‘out of fuel’ garages they had stopped at before, which actually had a tanker delivering so managed to fill up there instead.

Yes, Gav and her could have got the train back from Walsall to London so that they could both get to work and college on Monday respectively. Shosh is starting three weeks rotation (weeks spent on various different aspects ie a week on surgery, a week on radiology etc etc) on Monday – she is on nights for a week. There are no bus services to and from the College. Therefore, my daughter may well have had to walk down country lanes – perhaps even in the dark – whilst people like the woman aforementioned can use her car once and pop to the supermarket (before the strike ends on Tuesday) whilst her stockpile sits in her garage. Hmmm something wrong there. Stupid, selfish cow. Ah well, I am biased I guess in favour of my daughter – but then I would be.

And I am thoroughly sick to death of hearing and reading about sanctimonious people spouting on about how THEY go by public transport, bike or walk. Yes I agree you should if you can - I often get the bus to and from Barnstaple for example and quite often used the train (at over-inflated cost) to come to Devon before Jon and I got married. However, what are those to do who DO rely on their car? Say, for example, that yesterday, Shosh was qualified and was on call. Would she have had to tell the hypothetical farmer – “ok, well there isn’t a bus for another two hours, so I will get there when I can – meantime see if you can perform the emergency caesarean yourself. I think I can just about manage to carry all the equipment from the boot of my car and get it on the bus”.

Ah, I know ….. perhaps she would have had to seek out the selfish cow and see if she would relinquish any of her ill-gotten stockpile.