For several days now I've been stepping around two big plastic lidded boxes on the kitchen floor. The X and I bought them a few years back to contain our earthquake survival kit, but suffered a loss of interest before the kit was completed and the boxes stowed, out of sight and mind, in the shed. (The X survival kit I had to put together myself a couple of years later.)
"Shed" is a grand term for what amounts to a small metal box with sliding doors that don't. The first quiver of a tectonic plate and it'll be tumbling down into the bush. I'll just have to tumble after it. Fortunately, where it stops tumbling will be where the nearest water supply is.
I duly downloaded a list of what I needed in my kit and at the supermarket today made up the shortfall. I do wonder, though, how long it will be before I'm compelled to raid the box for the Whittaker's Peanut Slabs and the coffee.
The emergency clothing, on the other hand, I'm in no hurry to reclaim:
The centrepeice is a 25-year-old Swandri, still in excellent nick. I bought it for my first foray down to the West Coast (a vain attempt to blend in?) and it was sold as boyswear.
I shall accessorise it with a disgusting old black wool Glassons jersey that it's too depressing to wear even for gardening. Old track pants ditto. Three pairs of clean, albeit tatty, knickers. One pair of flowery gumboots from No 1 Shoe Warehouse.
If that doesn't put the rescuers off, nothing will.
