Just back from a visit to Sainsbury's. It was bedlam in there too. Everyone looked as though they were preparing for a siege. Their trolleys were piled high with stuff and the queues for the checkout had to be seen to be believed. What do they know that we don't know? And if preparing for a siege - why the need for industrial quantities of beer? People were laying in slabs and slabs of beer!

It was very tempting to join the lemmings and fill our trolley to overflowing too. But we are already prepared for a siege. We usually are. Though we do not have vast quantities of beer. But we do have jars of dried beans and tins of fish and buckets of rice and pasta. And always supposing that the besiegers don't cut the power, we also have two freezers with supplies as well.

We have had to replace the bird water bowl. The frost and ice and cold had caused it to split apart. I've just put it out, and watched a blackbird approach it very cautiously, snatch a beak full of water and then dash away hastily. Giggle! Birds are *so* suspicious of new things.

There's a pot of veggie minestrone on the bubble in the kitchen. I am considering whether to make a gooseberry cake (we have vast quantities of flour as well, should we become besieged). And there is yet the Sunday roast chicken to come. :-)