I had been impatiently waiting until the first potato plants had started flowering, and now as I walked around, examining the pots, I realised that some did have small flowers, bobbing in the slight breeze. I scraped away some of the soil in the pots, feeling down with my hand to see if there were any tubers. The soil was cool and damp and my fingers brushed something solid and round. A potato! I gradually worked my fingers around it, careful to avoid scraping the skin. My fingers slipped underneath and I gradually eased it up towards the surface. Perfect! It was the size of a golf ball, knobbly but with a very thin skin. I broke it off from the root and gently patted the soil back down. Then I went and tried another pot.
I poked through the roots, but felt nothing. Either it was not ready or they were hiding. I was impatient and curious, so I rolled the pot on its side, grasped the haulms and gently eased the plant out. The roots had spread out round the pot, binding the soil together, and halfway down I saw the smooth white surface of a potato, I eased my fingers behind it and it popped out. Then I carefully placed the rootball back into the pot, straightening the stems gently. They flopped over, looking unhappy in the way that only plants that have been mistreated can. Oops. I left the other plants in the pots, but my less invasive furtling still produced five potatoes. I washed them gently under the tap, the delicate skins sliding off.
I was coddling the plants, watering constantly and feeding with seaweed fertilizer so they would go on photosynthesising, producing glucose, and storing it as starch in the remaining potato tubers. I would harvest some a couple of times a week; to get a handful of potatoes to cook and eat. In the meantime, I made a vegetable stew with the carrots, peas, and potatoes I had just harvested, flavouring it with spring onion and garlic, and adding some lentils and soup mix to thicken it. Pre outbreak I would have posted pictures on Facebook, showing my harvest. Now I felt a complex mixture of pride in my achievements, sadness that people were going hungry, and guilt that I wasn’t sharing when I had so much.
I followed Vik’s advice and joined a couple of self-sufficiency forums. I read voraciously, drawing comfort from all the others out there, also trying to get by. The main forum I followed had a core group of users from before the outbreak, but just like me, most people had discovered it whilst trying to survive the food shortages. Many of the issues we faced were climate and environment dependent; often advice from someone in Cornwall didn’t relate well to someone living in Scotland, so just after I signed up, someone suggested the newbies and more experienced members set up groups together by location. I was reassured to see that there were many others living in the suburbs around London, but I just lurked for a while, reading through old threads.
One sunny afternoon I was sitting in the garden after a failed attempt to cook a late lunch. It had been one of those rare occasions when both the gas and electricity had been off. I was hungry and annoyed with myself; almost all the food I had required boiling water, if the power went off permanently I would be in trouble. As the sun shone down, I took out my phone and went online to research how to make a solar cooker. The concept seemed simple, foil or mirrors, conductors and insulators, but I needed specific instructions. I found a couple of different versions and eventually I logged onto the forum and started my first thread. I began to get replies almost immediately; the response was overwhelmingly positive with lots of hints and tips to make it work better. I stayed online all afternoon, working on some tentative plans whilst chatting to people. I began to contribute to another discussion, and although they weren’t actually here with me, for a couple of hours I didn’t feel entirely alone.
Two weeks passed; the number of cars driving around grew fewer and fewer, the ambient noise decreasing until all I could hear were the birds in the garden. But one morning I was disturbed by the sound of a large vehicle. It sounded like a truck but I couldn’t see anything. When it eventually rolled into sight, I saw that it was a green army vehicle, open at the sides but with shelves stretching all the way across. It was accompanied by soldiers walking along the road. I watched as people came out to talk to them, I hadn’t realised there were so many people left in the area. I wondered what they had been doing. Had they been hiding like me? They all looked anxious and stressed.
The soldiers were going door to door, with ambulance trolleys. As I watched, one group knocked on a door, which was opened almost immediately by an elderly lady. There was a very brief exchange and then they entered the house. I waited but nothing seemed to be happening. I had a grim feeling. As I looked around I saw another team of soldiers on the other side of the street, knocking on another door. They knocked several times, banging hard on the door and the window and then moved around the back. They returned and then they took out a door ram and within a couple of seconds had the front door open. They stopped to put on masks and then entered the house. They came out almost immediately and took one of the trolleys, went back in and returned with a body, which they wheeled towards the truck. I noticed that the soldier up on the bed of the truck was filling in forms and attaching them to the bags, as they were loaded. Meanwhile the elderly lady was walking slowly back towards the truck bedside a trolley with a filled body bag on. She looked upset and very frail and I was tempted to go out and help her, but as I watched, her neighbour ran up, took her arm and led her back to her home.
The body was loaded and the truck moved forwards, slowly inching down the road. I gazed at the soldiers, their faces looked grim and in their camouflage uniforms, it seemed unreal, like a film or documentary; a step removed. I continued to watch through my kitchen window, feeling detached from it all.
When they got to my bungalow, I was ready and waiting by the door. Opening it, I spoke first, ‘I’m ok, it’s only me here.’
The soldier had tired looking eyes, and hair flecked with grey. He nodded and turned to move away and I quickly asked ‘Do you have any news?’
He turned back but shook his head, ‘Not much, all I can say is that the government advice is to move out into the country.’
‘What about food?’ I asked.
‘Food distribution is via local authorities through county, district, and parish councils,’ he replied, it sounded like a spiel he had said many times before, and my forehead knotted in puzzlement. He sighed and said wearily ‘they’re not supplying food to anywhere inside the M25, if you’ve friends or family in the country I suggest you go to them.’
I nodded, ‘Thanks’ I said, as I closed the door; my worst fears realised.
The next morning people started to leave. There had been occasional departures, but now they packed up their stuff and their kids and drove away en-masse. By the middle of the week, most of the properties were empty.
Thursday was the summer solstice, and the morning light woke me up at a ridiculously early hour. I tried to go back to sleep but after an hour I gave up and got up. The empty streets outside looked inviting, I hadn’t been out for over two weeks and it was so early; no-one would be out yet. As I walked past the empty driveways, it was easy to tell who had gone; the lack of car in the driveway and the discarded objects in the front gardens, in their hurry to leave, most people had made quite a mess.
I spied a picnic blanket lying in a driveway, then a couple of doors down, a duvet. It looked like people had difficulty fitting their stuff into their cars. I walked a little further then stopped and backtracked, the extra blankets might come in handy at some point. Later that afternoon, as I grated carrots in an attempt to make carrot cake, I saw more knockers, moving down the road. Two men and a woman; all wearing pink t-shirts with the same slogan. They looked relaxed, and as I watched, they approached one of the houses that the soldiers had broken into. I saw them enter and then quickly back out again, hands over their mouths. They moved down the street, spitting and swearing. I watched disgusted and fascinated at the same time. Then they picked a new house, the one that had the picnic blanket that morning. What were they doing? There was no one there and the door was locked. There was a thudding sound as they kicked at the door. In just a couple of seconds, the jamb broke and the door swung open. The knockers had moved on from knocking. They came out with arms full of tinned food, and walked off down the road, laughing and shoving each other.