
On thursday there were severe weather warnings, with widespread snow on the way.
I'm not staying in the highlands, or some remote corner of the country, but in the midlands, Gloucestershire, at the beautiful Bourton on the water. In this area ( The Cotswolds) many locals ride around in Land Rovers and 4 x 4's, and are well used to country life.
All this therefore made Friday's public behaviour all the more puzzling - I wouldn't have anticipated the classic British 'Lemming syndrome' to have manifested right here, but as my photograph demonstrates - there was mass panic buying in Tescos supermarket, Stow on the Wold !!!
Everyone was talking about it - everbody was bewildered by it, and everyone who went near it picked up on the atmosphere of blind panic which led to some most peculiar buying patterns.
No bread, milk, not a vegetable in sight, rice, flour and pet food shelves were stripped bare. - I guess people were buying flour to make bread as they 'would never again' be able to buy ready made - and of course being Brits, the pet food stock mustn't give way to our animals having to eat food scraps.!!! Heaven Forbid!!!
Not a tin of chopped tomatoes, baked beans, and very little of many other lines - It had to be said that given this weeks expose on TESCO filling their beefburgers with horse meat, there were plenty of burgers on offer on the shelves.
This mass buying would make an interesting Psychological study - why to Brits do it -????
In the event, the smaller, local shop was fully stocked in plenty - the snow came, everything sort of stopped and we all had fun with taboggans and frollicking in the snow for a day, and by the day after it was pretty much over and done with, roads and most shops open, snow melting, and opportunities for Joe Public to fill the gaps in their household foodstores ' just in case' the snow comes in again.!!!
TESCO's supermarket muct have been rubbing their hands - although I guess they did have the beefburget debacle to recover from this week - ah - there's a thought! Do you think it was TESCO who started the roumour??????
Either way - the situation I witnessed this week once again made me realise how lucky I am to live in Cyprus, where we see a far more relaxed attitude to things !!!!!