Toilet paper crisis

Dear readers,

Australia is going through a serious crisis right now. It's a war of toilet paper!

We have three rolls left in our household and after that we have to get out to fight for more. The thing is we didn't hoard because we didn't think it would come to this. We saw on TV how people fought each other in the supermarket for the last rolls but it all seemed unreal at the time. But it turned out to be the grim reality.

Most shops near where we live have empty shelves, no toilet paper, no tissues etc.

Hubby came home with some household paper yesterday that we could maybe use in emergency but I am afraid it will clog up the plumbing. I spoke to our daughter and she said that she had quite a bit extra TP so maybe we can go up to Sydney and get some from her. People generally try to go to the toilet at work so as not to have to use TP at home as much.

It reminds me of films we used to see of Russia and people queueing in shops to buy things. Here we have seen scenes on TV of people fighting each other over toilet paper. This is not so surprising since Australians use about 88 toilet paper rolls per person, or slightly less than two rolls a week, over the course of the year, according to data from German market research company Statista. This means a family of four would need about 15 rolls for a 14-day quarantine period.

All this is obviously due to media scaring us over the corona virus. I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of the virus but the daily scare reports certainly do the trick with inducing people to hoard.

We are having a lunch next weekend and one of the people we invited asked what they could bring and I was almost going to say "a toilet paper roll would be nice" but it seemed crass. We will try to manage and hope for the best.

Otherwise all is well and we are slowly getting used to living the beach life down here in Wonoona. We are also slowly getting used to hubby working three days a week. Or let's put it this way. He is getting paid for three days a week but probably working five days a week as he did before.

Ending this with special greetings to women friends everywhere.