When we come out of the other side of this ...

- Are there some lifestyle changes that you think might keep ?

For me, I am thinking I rather like the idea of teleconferencing in place of face to face meetings. I like the idea of working from home, if just one day a week. This year I've been walking to/from work one day a week, if I can work from home one day, that's 4 5-mile car journeys saved, and it is those short journeys that are most polluting. A bit of flex in hours too - it seems crazy to be struggling to work the allotment in failing light in the evening having spent all the daylight hours inside at a computer.

I also think I will keep to using our farm shop more, their meat is great, I can drop by on my way to work and he is desperate for customers at the moment as he has lost the restaurant trade.

I am also, for the time being, still enjoying a bit of make do and mend. Or should I say, even more make do and mend than usual !

We haven't really changed anything so far, apart from being more frugal with certain items. It has served to kick start my veg growing rather more quickly than I had intended, and I will be giving more priority to crops I can preserve as well as eat fresh. Overall, though, apart from the social side of our lives being curtailed, it's pretty much business as usual at home.

To be honest, its having very little impact on us, living in quite an isolated place and being reasonably self sufficient. I will be glad to be able to do an online Asda shop again. We're lambing just now and are always in purdah for 3 weeks anyway as are all our neighbours.
Farming has to go on and the only difference is that we have to phone through orders for feed etc and not get out of our vehicle when we collect.
I have always loved where we live (even in 6 months of continuous rain) but i think this has made me even more appreciative being able to be out and about on the farm all day when so many people are severely restricted. I feel very fortunate.

Yes. I will never trust Tesco again and will cultivate relationships with the independent shopkeepers who have delivered to us while we've been self-isolating, even though our food spend will increase. Once we're allowed out we intend to volunteer locally (depending on whether out daughter needs to be shielded - she's waiting to hear from her surgery) so hopefully this will help us to forge more links, relationships and friendships locally. Because we drive to Hereford to work we don't really know that many people in our town.

One small thing that has worked out well is that, when the handwashing caused a rush on soap, I bought a 5L bottle of liquid soap, intended for hotels (well, they won't be needing it) from one of our usual work suppliers. I can re-fill the various pump action bottles quite easily, it is reasonably kind to the hands and smells mildly like tangerine jelly ! As the pump part of the bottles can't be recycled, but I can find use for the empty 5L bottles in the garden, it saves on plastic.

I suspect that I will always make sure I've got a few extra rolls of toilet paper and an extra bag of pasta tucked away when we're back to normal! I heard a stand-up comedian saying (quite seriously) that it must be people with money who have been hoarding groceries to this ridiculous level, as a lot of people in the UK don't have the extra cash to finance a food hoard. And I think he's right, as a lot of the items you can't buy in our town at the moment are more middle-class things. (I'll hold my hands up to the fact that I was looking for them myself!!) Bread flour for the bread maker and decaffeinated ground coffee are two things I can't get my hands on for love or money. In fact you can't buy any kind of flour...

Because we're seversl miles from any shop I keep a fair stock of basics anyway. I get a big Asda delivery at the beginning of every month. I haven't bkthered to try and get a slot this month because i can get out - many people can't. Twice in 4 days an Asda van has stopped on our yard asking for a nearby, hard to find, property. A couple, in their 30s with no children and 2 vehicles. Even if one of them has a genuine health reason for not going out I'm sure that they could have managed with one delivery for the week and left a slot for someone else like my next door neighbour who has 3 children and is 6 months pregnant.

The way I normally shop has, so far, left me virtually unaffected by the shortages. Like Ploshkin, I keep a good stock of the basics, but additionally, I buy in bulk if it is something that has a long shelf life. I always buy rice in 5kg bags (sometimes 10kg bags!), have in four or five types of dried pasta, and buy stuff when it's at a reduced price - enough to last me until the price is reduced next time. So when the panic buying started, I already had good stocks of everything, including toilet rolls. Haven't needed to buy any of those so far, nor should I for at least another 8-10 weeks.

The only real change I have made is to replace things a bit sooner than I normally would, in case they are difficult to get.

Having sounded off about Tesco, I may have to revise my attitude. As my daughter pointed out, if you decide to boycot a supermarket it's easy to do if you live in a city as she does, as there are lots of alternatives. But we have a choice between three small supermarkets, and having tried to use the other two, they also have big drawbacks. In Aldi I found the staff were getting much too close and not allowing me to stick to a two metre gap. And the Co-op is so expensive. Milk is 40p more than in Tesco: I know that the Co-op has its roots in ethical trading, so I researched to see if the extra money was going straight to the farmer. But actually the Co-op pays less to dairy farmers than any other UK supermarket. So I may have to eat humble pie and creep back to Tesco, but I was encouraged to find that they are supporting NHS staff with food donations, so I have a good reason to go back.

I did look at small local shops - we're OK here for shops which sell fruit and veg, bakery and meat, but there are few places which sell groceries. I did look in one small independent shop for flour, but at £3 for a 1.5kg bag it was flour for rich people!

A modest co-op opened about half a mile from my old Dad, and it is perfect for him. All the basics he needs, and though more expensive, the dividend card scheme mostly compensates and seems to appeal to him. And it's a nice walking distance.

At the moment we are (sister & I) worrying about Aged Ps. Worried that Dad still is shopping at co-op. Worried that the care home mum is in has had a CV case. At least I've managed to get an Iceland delivery ordered for Dad. We were supposed to be visiting for Easter, he will have to make do with a food parcel !

I understand your plight Dandelion. Similar here - in town there are two small supermarkets, Co-op and Spar. Co-op is, of course, much more expensive than Tesco, but Spar is frankly outrageous. Won't even go in there. We also have a small geengrocer and butcher. 11 miles away in Llandrindod Wells is a fair sized Tesco and Aldi and that is where I get the bulk of my shopping. When I last saw any, Aldi's bread flour was 55p for a 1.5kg bag. It's not really a choice if you're on a tightish budget.

When the supermarket shelves were cleared, just before Lockdown, my other half walked all around our town trying to find a few basics which we needed for our quarantine, and did manage to get frozen veg from Spar. It's not a shop I would usually visit, but they did at least have some food left (because the more reasonable stuff from other shops had been snapped up.) So it was either pay more, or go without. I think here, our Spar is about equal to Co-op pricewise, but from what I've heard Spar shops are all franchised out, and there is some difference in what they charge. I found this out when I heard the story locally that a Spar shop attached to a petrol station near Hereford was selling 500gr bags of pasta for £5.99, when you couldn't get pasta anywhere. The person who saw it rang Spar headquarters to complain but was told that individual shops set their own prices.

Ah, that would explain it then. About a half mile out of town is a campsite, and Spar is the nearest supermarket to it - hence the higher prices, I would think.

It's coming for the year since this topic started and lock downs have come, gone, returned. We've had bus routes stopped at the height of things which is drastic in a small rural community with a very small and limited corner shop (bread, milk, beer, fags, dog food and papers). Of course it's unfair to judge a shop that caters to its market when you are the vegetarian end of vegan by choice, don't smoke and are allergic to alcohol. It's a funny thing but a lot of even the older folks have found out how to shop online.

I think we're all a bit punch drunk with it - a lot of us seem to be coping one way or another, but in that 'I wonder what can go wrong next?' way. I began to think last weekend that it's actually going to take a while to heal from all of this - it won't be a case of carrying on from where we left off.

I'm sure all forms of chaos will ensue as we find that people can't read and listen but only see and hear what they want to see and hear. I wouldn't mind a hair cut as I haven't had one since last May which ain't good on a normally short hair style.