The local Parish newsletter arrived last week and there, among the notifications about malfunctioning streetlights, an incidence of malicious roundabout furniture knocking-over and the news that we came second (out of three) in the South East in Bloom (Rural Villages) competition, was the alarming revelation that we have a Disaster Committee.

In the event of a nuclear or biological attack, the Committee will immediately set off to guard our water supplies, man the village hall into which we will all be evacuated, and scoop up elderly residents in order to feed them soup and biscuits from supplies stored, it seems, in some secret location.

Given that the Committee totals no more than ten at best and that most of these are the elderly people noted above, I reckon our water supply is pretty well scuppered.  And since the village can be cut off by one three feet deep, twenty yard flood along its only outgoing road, I don’t fancy anyone’s chances of getting hold of the soup and biscuits either.

From Not Being First Fish by P Spencer-Beck.  Available from Amazon (non-illustrated edition). Second edition (illustrated) due 2018