The government’s "Be Ready" campaign has produced a mixed response.
When Secretary of State for Defence Wes Streeting introduced it amid a cybersecurity scare, my local supermarket ran out of all kinds of tinned goods and bottled water. It is still very hard to buy camping lanterns and wind-up radios, even on Amazon. Yet most people I know laugh at the concept of "prepping". Maybe they laugh in public, but prepare secretly in order to avoid looking uncool – someone is buying that water!
My adult children mock me for being a "prepper". It started when I had to replace my old gas cooker; I was reluctant to switch to an induction hob because my old cooker had done a sterling job when we were without electricity for days following Storm Desmond in 2015. We could still cook for the family and many others; we even managed to do bacon and sausage buns for church. Everything else had failed; the university closed, and students were hitching lifts out of the city, desperate to get back to civilisation and Wi-Fi.
Where have all the men’s conventions gone?
Here is a question that I often get asked: “Why are there no men’s conventions?”Immediately, depending on where in …