I have zero survival skills for when the apocalypse comes

It’s a good time to be a practical type of person

The world feels like it’s on a shoogly peg.

I suppose this might be a good time to be a practically-minded person - to know when to stock the cellar with Spam, how to make fire and skin a rabbit.

Civilisation will eventually be divided into those who can whip up a glamping tent using a Tesco bag for life and a couple of loose twigs, and the rest of us, who don’t own any Goretex and never know the difference between north and south.

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Soon, the Ray Mears types will have their long-awaited moment to shine. 

They’ll be able to rub a bit of muck on their faces, then whittle, kindle, suck moisture from grass stems and eat whitchetty grubs (hairy caterpillars will do) a la I’m a Celebrity.

However, I’ll never be one of them, and don’t need an end-of-the-world event to prove it. 

I realised exactly how impractical I was last Sunday evening, when an everyday household repair turned into what felt like a survival situation. 

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We’d just uncorked a bottle of wine, fired up Netflix and decanted a large bag of Giant Monster Munch into a bowl, when we noticed water sliding out from under the tiles at the bathroom door. 

My husband and I are like cheese and cheese, or chalk and chalk.

WHAT IS THAT!?

We both whipped each other up into a frenzy, freaked out, and started catastrophising

I admit I was crying a little bit. He was pacing.

After panic Googling, I decided it was WET ROT. We’ll never be able to move house now, I said, adding that the floorboards were definitely about to cave in. We better not go into the bathroom at all. Cordon the whole thing off.

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It’s probably been happening for MONTHS. I cursed the name of the shoddy bathroom company that gave us our installation, before going into liquidation - how apt - a few months later. 

I estimated that it would cost, ooh, around £100k to fix. That’d be us. Done. Finished.

We gingerly squished a few kitchen towels into the cracks.

We thought that one of us - maybe the smallest, ie. me - should try and squeeze underneath the floorboards, via the cellar under the living room, scuttle along on their back and see if they could work out what was happening from that pitch dark perspective among the building foundations. 

That was really our stupid plan. 

Thankfully, there was a practical person at the end of the phone, to talk us down.

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Hooray for my sister-in-law, who is a DIY queen and actually seems to enjoy assembling Ikea furniture. She is a proper grown-up and gently guided us through the process. 

First, we got the bath panel off. 

Okay, HE got the bath panel off, while I stood in the background, holding the phone torch and quietly weeping. 

Confused person doing repairsConfused person doing repairs
Confused person doing repairs | StockPhotoPro - stock.adobe.com

Then, we located the leaks, before shoving plastic yoghurt pots underneath and calling a plumber (Able Girl, Edinburgh, very reliable). 

I say we called one plumber, but about 40 of them didn’t answer the phone. They don’t need to, in a world where the impractical types outnumber the practical.

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Anyway, she came out the next day, fixed it all easily, no problemo. 

It turned out that here was an awful lot of hair in the pipes, which might be mine, since I moult like a Labrador retriever. Apparently, there also wasn’t any sealant under the bath. 

Again, I cursed the bathroom company.  That wasn’t a great experience, but none of it had been worth getting our knickers in a twist about. 

But, yes, when a world disaster strikes, don’t come knocking on our door. We won’t be prepping, but will have worked ourselves up into a froth.

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You might think I’d be skilled at certain things - for instance, foraging. 

As a food writer at The Scotsman, it's been in and out of vogue for years, and I’ve been invited to plenty of courses. The thing is, I don’t remember any of it. 

While the instructor is talking, I’m too busy wondering when the talking bit will be over, so we can go back to the kitchen and eat some lunch.

Delayed gratification is not my bag, and you can tell from my inappropriate footwear that I’m no natural hunter-gatherer.

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Yes, I could probably identify a chanterelle, but you don’t want to risk being part of my mushroom roulette. All the other stuff - elderberries, brambles, pineappleweed, pignuts, meadowsweet. Well, you could probably make a pleasant cordial. as the world burns. A meal, maybe not.

And I’m definitely not going to kill a rabbit. I’m only just over my Watership Down trauma. 

Food-wise, I’m not going to be any help, not that this would be my first priority.

In any apocalypse situation, the first thing I’d do would be to loot - or, I’m happy to pay, if the ophthalmologists haven’t fled - my local Specsavers for contact lenses 

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Everyone else would have backpacks stuffed full of tinned goods, torches, bottled water and those mini cookers, and mine would be full of solution and little plastic cases. 

Eating is going to be the last of our worries, if we can’t see. My prescription is minus five. That is NOT the vision of a survivor.

If I didn’t have my contacts, I definitely wouldn’t be able to identify any kind of mushroom. I wouldn’t be able to see the forest, let alone the trees. 

Never mind, at least, when Armageddon comes, we’ll have the number of a good plumber.

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