Remembrance of times past

I’LL wager the only people wallowing in this dreary virus, saying “Told you so,” to anyone who will listen, are irritating fruitcakes with their ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ placards. Them and hardcore survivalists called Randy and Chuck (why do Americans have a near monopoly on the daftest names?) now hunkered down in their post-apocalypse bunkers in deepest Wyoming and Montana, noshing through pallet loads of baked beans, pasta and powdered milk as they ponder ‘What next?’ by the light of a generator-driven lamp. True doomsters will be studying the world our ancestors were forced to live in and planning how to survive when the basics – the luxuries, more like – we all assume will always be there have run out; fearful of a bleak new world where nothing ‘works’ any longer.

First off, we humans need fire. No fire, no warmth, no coffee, no plates of steaming hot pasta or sizzling steaks… Whilst rubbing dry