A bantam is laying too, so our nourishment is assured. So is theirs – I have bought three bags of feed for them, although I had a whole bag left unopened. It’s the only panic buying I’ve done.

I’ve also been speaking to friends and family online and on the phone and have sent a few presents because they’re the ways to stay connected right now. I don’t think I can spend several months without seeing my children and grandchildren, so we’ll work out the best way. And I’ve suggested to Wink that, if we’re all holing up at home, she might as well do it here with us. She has an appointment at the beginning of April that, unless it’s cancelled, she doesn’t want to miss, and she’s shopping for a friend at present who’s recovering from an operation, but after that she’s free as a bird. As are we.

I didn’t get around to asking Wink about food – my puzzle is, we had a lot of meat in the house when I was a child. And I know my mother made shepherd’s pie and casseroles from the leftovers, but somehow I feel there must have been more that wasn’t used.

Her friend Jane was kept quite short of money by her husband, which is a story in itself. He had a girlfriend and, though it can’t be known if he spent money on her, Jane looked after his elderly mother and his Down’s Syndrome sister and had paying guests too, and he had a very easy ride – but that’s not the point and I shouldn’t digress. I remember once, my parents and sister were out and Auntie Jane came to spend the evening with me. We looked in the fridge and there was a small remnant of roast pork. It wasn’t enough to feed two – until Auntie Jane got her hands on it. It was sliced and cooked with onion, apple and gravy and it was plenty, as well as delicious. I remember being astonished and impressed – and I’d do the same myself now, I learned a lesson that night. And my mother was in her teens when the war broke out, so was well used – being motherless and her father’s housekeeper – to using every scrap of food. But she’d put that behind her afterwards, with much relief. All the same, being wasteful was not possible, I’m sure. So what happened to the leftovers? Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe the dogs came in handy.