Cargo Cult

Smug couple leaving the supermarket, each with two sixteen-roll packs of lavatory paper: smug because they had gone separately to the self-checkout machines, so that nobody would spot that they were making off with a whole sixty-four of the things.

A triumph for this couple who evidently have nothing better to do in life but wipe their arses.

Strange the desolation of shelves with a few scraps of packaging lying on them, next to shelves loaded with things nobody has thought to hoard yet. No alcoholic hand gel almost from day one; two weeks later all the bleach is gone as the slow-witted suddenly apprehend that it kills germs too; some days later all the soap bars...not a gradual diminution but in a swoop.