Never once while binge watching all the Max max films back to back had he visualized (I added a D, but in my defence i’ve tolerated the misspelling of the word, so we’re even) the situation as it was; dire. He’d been keeping an eye on the meter but  it remained static for the most time so he needn’t bother. The candles were shortening and their number was lessening. Soon he would need more. The daily diet of pasta and pesto sauce  was relentless, the peas and sweet corn supply had run out weeks ago, and the lack of vegetables was making defecation an ordeal; to cope with the pain he’d load up on Paracetamol, their numbers were dwindling. Soon the toilet paper would run out too, which would mean a trip out.

How long had it been since he’d ventured out? Heaven knew, he was getting cabin fever, the back garden was a mud bath after the floods, as was the downstairs, and it really smelt, but with the country in lock down, what was he to do. No builders had come to help strip the plaster from the walls, no one had come to help clear up, the insurance company had told him to make a list of everything ruined, which he had done; the pile of possessions in the front garden stayed the same as the list on his notepad grew larger almost daily;

“Come to think of it, yes I did have a spare laptop in the downstairs bathroom, it was waterproof and I liked to watch the “Iplayer” whilst soaking”

They hadn’t called since then, no one had called for a good while.

Tonight he would steal out, he’d call Tony to see if he fancied a trip to Tescos. He decided to text, the phones were being monitored, some bright spark in China had force downloaded an app onto all the citizens phones during this pandemic to keep tabs on people for their own safety, this just happened to coincide with the phone company helping to roll out our country’s 5G network, now we’ve got the app too.

He and Tony crouched in the shadows, smoking a thin roll-up, the banana peel had done nothing apart form giving the cigarette a slightly sickly taste, but waste not want not. From behind the steel doors came the gentle purr of the air conditioning machinery, the fridges, the fans. They’d seen inside and it was a veritable cache of loo roll, paracetamol and all sorts of good stuff. The meagre funds they had in their pockets would be enough for a few bits, not much, but they were used to having not much now. Just hoping Ted was still working the security there, lately his colleagues had been dropping like flies.