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Peter Edgerton
Friday, 2 May 2025, 11:20
There was not a single tangerine to be seen in my local supermarket this morning. In fact, all of the fruit and vegetable shelves were looking decidedly sorry for themselves as I trundled by - just a smattering of produce was on offer, including an odd, bedraggled leek peering out at shoppers like the child who's always the last to be picked for the playtime football match, plus a few spuds that had clearly seen better days.
It's a good job Monday's electricity blackout lasted only a few hours round these parts, because if it had been a question of days, I suspect even the lonesome leek would have been snaffled pretty sharpish by some desperate suitor or other.
We're such an odd bunch, humans, aren't we? On the one hand, over many centuries we've consistently shown extraordinary resilience and an innate ability to adapt and even thrive in the most testing of circumstances. On the other hand, we're often just a load of old scaredy cats.
When, during his inaugural speech in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt famously uttered the l line "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", he's unlikely to have toyed with the idea of adding "... except for a shortage of bread and toilet paper" because, frankly, that version would have been unlikely to have girded the loins of a nation ravaged by the Great Depression in quite the same way as the original. There's an element of truth to it, though.
Maybe the obvious contradiction in all of this can be explained by an exaggeration of our everyday individual characters. Some people I know, for example, are massively cautious while going about their daily business and would never dream of crossing a road without looking in both directions a minimum of four-hundred times. Perhaps it was these chaps who bought all the tangerines. Meanwhile others of my acquaintance are born risk-takers for whom life is just one, long bungee jump. "What, no electricity?" they'll cry. "No problem. Look how long I can hold my hand directly over this candle flame, everybody." These chaps probably don't worry too much about the leek supply in a time of crisis.
Finally, there's a third group who are neither overly-cautious nor madly adventurous; they just kind of potter about a bit, taking in their stride whatever life may throw their way. I suspect, in fact, that they represent the vast majority of us and might, during a power cut, pop an extra loaf of wholemeal into their shopping trolley but that'll be about it.
Whatever the true cause, it's indisputable that we have an unerring and generalised tendency towards mild panic whenever we're temporarily knocked off balance. Equally true is the fact that we always come bouncing back - just like the tangerines that had returned to the shop shelves by late afternoon.
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