I DON'T mean to panic anyone, but the shoppers surrounding me in the mile-long line of checkouts in Tesco (ear defenders recommended) at the weekend were buying an awful lot of bottled water.

It could be that there's a camping and caravanning convention in a field near town.

Or it could be because there's a war on and people are uneasy.

Being a bit of a sheep I told the checkout operator that I had forgotten to buy some and an assistant was promptly dispatched.

Crazy, really, to react like that. But let's face it, should there suddenly be some sort of interruption to our routine, we are ridiculously under-prepared.

I mean what sort of "emergency" rations (non-perishable foods and other useful products) does the average British householder have in stock? A couple of candles - probably scented and used for decoration in the bathroom - a few tins of baked beans and possibly a tin of fruit cocktail.

Not going to last long, is it?

As a nation we lead a very comfortable life - we have everything on tap, shops full of everything we could possibly want, many open round-the-clock, and other services such as transport and power readily available.

But as a result of being spoilt we are hopeless in a crisis.

A few leaves on the track during the first winds of autumn and the railways grind to a halt, a short power cut and we race frantically to our neighbour's, worrying about not being able to make tea and missing the next episode of EastEnders.

Shops only have to close for a day or two over Christmas and we're twitchy about whether we've got enough groceries to get through.

How we would survive - as many Iraqi people are having to - on a food parcel and with no power, is not even worth contemplating.

Having been raised on ready-meals and take-aways, many of us would not known what to do with the contents of a food parcel - with rice, lentils, chick peas and the like.

Even with staple ingredients many of us - me included - would struggle to create something edible.

Our lives are too cosy for our own good. We fret over every small blip.

The postman is late, someone parked in the space we usually park in, the door-to-door supermarket delivery service was missing a bag of Quavers.

We could benefit from a short, sharp shock. Not that I'm willing some sort of conflict to take place over here - heaven forbid.

But a situation in which we end up getting a little less of what we fancy would be no bad thing.

We take too much for granted.

Didn't the tanker crisis result in us all appreciating petrol? Maybe for about a week.

As there's a war on, maybe ration books could be reintroduced.

We would learn to survive on less and probably all be better people for it.

Updated: 12:04 Monday, April 07, 2003