Yesterday we signed the preliminary contracts on the sale of our little house in the mountains (cue brass fanfare: it's only taken two years for someone to make us an offer). So while we were up there we started packing, an activity guaranteed to raise tension in the most laid-back of families. Towels were the principal flashpoint. It was my intention to bring all the country house towels back to town. I have this thing about towels. I like them big and I like them fragrant. I also like my hand towel to match my bath towel, and I fear being caught with an empty towel cupboard. Mr F doesn't really think about towels until he's dripping and then his only stipulation is that they dry him in a satisfactorily non-scratchy manner. He'd quite like me to throw away any towel more than ten years old. And I'd rather not throw away any towel , ever. Even though, as of yesterday, we have a long position on towels. A very long position actually.

Then I was faced with further evidence of my hoarding tendency: the kitchen cupboards. Eight unopened boxes of pasta, four packages of risotto rice, ten cans, dear God can it really be true, ten cans of tuna. I could go on. This is all born of my fear of being snowed in without supplies, a distinctly unlikely event because if so much as a single snowflake fell we were down off that mountain faster than you can say 'frostbite.'

I always loved that moment in The Wind in the Willows when Badger, with his comforting winter store cupboard, rustles up supper for Ratty and Mole. That's what a store cupboard is for. Dipping into, when unexpected guests arrive or the snow's too deep to run down to the Wild Woods Tesco. I understand the concept. I just can't quite bring myself to do it. Which also accounts for the six cans of baked beans and, I'm ashamed to say, two kilograms of expired flour.

Nuts, definitely.