Things were going so well until they told me to top up my half tank.

I’d wish they’d give the same advice on topping up other stuff. With the widespread panic expected over the next few days let me explain something.

We can survive without petrol. I rely on my car far too much but even I know that life will go on when the petrol runs out.

What did I do before I had a car?

And how did I communicate when there was no such thing as a text?

Yes, I will have to walk the odd mile, and I may get wet in the rain. And most of all I won’t be able to get to a big supermarket on the outskirts of town to buy some pointless thing I will never use. But I will survive.

Or by the time you are reading this we have realised this was just another ‘alert’ that turned out not to be an alert. Either way, relax, everything will be fine.

My vehicle is just like all that other rubbish I have amassed over my 38 years on the planet.

This week I visited the recycling centre and I must say we are one hell of a wasteful bunch. We will throw absolutely anything for all sorts of reasons.

One fellow I met was throwing almost new toys and barely used furniture. The latter because it was the wrong colour.

There you have it. We throw things away now because they are the wrong colour.

The recycling centre should be called the ‘wastage centre for a spoilt society’.

It seem the only people at the centre who don’t seem to throw perfectly good stuff away are the over fifties. I have nothing but respect for them.

If they are not throwing tree branches and shrubs they are getting rid of products that I thought were extinct. What one earth was that beige metal machine thingy with a hole in the top?

It looked like a washing machine but it wasn’t a washing machine.