Be Prepared

 I’m going to have to go shopping again.

I’m clean out of chocolate, bread and marmalade.

Following the Government’s advice (without, I have to say, really knowing why), and braving the Easter holiday traffic, I loaded up on three days of provisions on Monday.

As you know, preparedness and resilience are the key.

To start the ordeal, I found that here were lots of empty water bottles stored haphazardly in the kitchen, so I hauled them off to the Fuente to fill them up. While I was there, I also bought a couple of packs of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka from Isabel’s corner-store (I don’t smoke any more, but while I’m learning to say ‘I surrender’ in Russian, I thought I had better be ready in the event things truly do go pear-shaped).

I still have plenty of toilet tissue. I’m not making that mistake again. Back in the Covid-days the household was woefully short of loo-paper, and I was the only reader. They would have me sit outside and sometimes shout ‘OK, I’ve finished another chapter’.

Try that with a Kindle!

Today, I will buy some soap and toothpaste. One should look one’s best when surrendering.

Other vital supplies must include plenty of canned food, for when the electricity fails.

Also, to keep me in tortillas, another chicken (the dog got the last one).

I’ll need a tin-opener and apparently a Swiss army knife (what, for defence? Or I dunno, maybe it’s to skin a wild boar). An extra bottle of gas, candles, lighter, torch, coffee, aspirin and bandages. Let’s see: A recipe book for garden plants and, just in case I turn feral, a jumbo bottle of HP Sauce.

The reason why we must stock up at least three days in case of emergency seems a bit peculiar – since whether a nuclear winter, an invasion by the Ivans, another Trump-inspired market crash, a plague, a comet or a mass-poisoning from micro-plastics (the most likely of the lot) – it stands to reason that they are all going to take longer than a three-day vacation from work before society can settle down again.

Last Friday, and this is true, I drove over to the barracks of the Spanish Legion, la Legión Española, in Viator, just outside Almería. Joining a few military enthusiasts, I had been invited to visit their on-site museum.

In the first room as you enter, there are a number of portraits of past leaders – including José Millán-Astray (a Samurai enthusiast who founded the Spanish Legion in 1920) and a youthful looking Francisco Franco.

Millán-Astray is described as ‘an able soldier but an eccentric and extreme personality. His style and attitude would become part of the mystique of the Legion. He was notable for his disfigured body: during his time in the army, he lost both his left arm and right eye and was shot several times in the chest and legs’. He is revered by the legionnaires, but thought to have been something of a handful by his enemies.

I don’t know anything much about the other one, Francisco Franco, I think he later went into politics.

Joking aside, the museum is full of what one might expect – arms, uniforms, paintings and history, while the presentation was made by a few junior officers speaking in English – since all NATO officers must use that language. A sensible choice indeed.

Listening to them, I genuinely felt that they would have our backs if it became necessary.  

But, and let’s be practical, they’ll have other duties than looking out for little me. So, who must I turn to if the Armageddon hits?

I was thinking of buttering up my neighbour Juan the Gardener. He has plenty of potatoes and apparently an interesting recipe for cats.

And after all, one never knows…