Tired this morning, as I was up late watching the war, and then - extremely rarely - actually couldn't sleep worrying about it. Yesterday, I called my Dad for some reassurance, and he replied "I'm a fatalist: if your number's up, your numbers up". That was useful. Then, last night, T said that M had persuaded her that there might be a scare about something in the water.
Check out the Home Office website:
It is sensible to be prepared for any emergency in the home and to make plans for any major disruption, including severe weather and floods.
In any type of emergency, you could lose access to power, water, telephones, and roads. Therefore:
Have on hand such items as:
- batteries
- a battery-powered torch
- a battery-powered or wind-up radio
- some ready-to-eat food, e.g. tinned food
- bottled water
- blankets
Have the phone numbers of your local police, council, utility companies and family members handy in one place.
Here's a few problems: what's the point in having phone numbers on hand when you "could lose access to telephones"? And what have severe weather and floods got to do with terrorism? Or is Saddam/whoever godly on the weather front now, too?
And what is the war? Some kind of bizarre fancy dress party where you have to make a costume out of a blanket, water bottles, batteries and the like. The Tin Man for the twentyfirst century?
Here's what worries me - for some reason, I feel that in the case of acts of terrorism or war, everyone should return to their birthplace (Manchester in my case), but obviously with all the transport infrastructure out, how will I get there? And maybe at times like this, it's only family that counts. I have some second cousins in East Finchley, maybe they would take me in? And then I think, my immediate family, we're not always that great at Rosh Hashannah: like all families, when we're locked in a house together, we're bound to argue. How much worse would it be in a sealed room?
I'm worried that all my friends locally, when the chips are down, would be all on-yer-bike, looking after their own, and I'd have to get into my sealed room on my own. (Of course when I said this last night, my friends immediately said I should come over to their house if there's a war, and if there's not, could I at least come for Pesach). Last night we also talked about the wind-up radio thing: I explained that it's better, as your batteries might run out, and M said, by the time the batteries have run out, surely you'll be completely out of bottled water and Heinz baked beans. I'm scared.
Of course I may be over-reacting, but times like these make me think about what's truly important: family, good friends. I may have a nice house, and car, and my own personal bus shelter, but what it really comes down to is, do you love? Are you loved? It's like the global version of "would they hide you from the Nazis?" but with a universalist edge, some kind of bizarre Reality TV game, only it's really real, and it's not on TV.
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