It sounds paradoxical - indeed it is paradoxical - but scarcity is ubiquitous today. Nothing is everywhere.

At my local supermarket yesterday, shelves usually full were bare. Tinned food and water were gone.

I wondered how my mother and mother-in-law - two elderly ladies who need help from their families due to declining health - would cope amid this round of panic-buying, whipped up by fear of war, if they were on their own and unsupported, like so many older folk.

Caring for elderly relatives also teaches you just how scarce the services of the NHS have become. In fact, you don’t need to have elderly relatives to feel the scarcity. Whether you’re young or old, accessing healthcare is a competitive scramble.

My local GP practice has a three-week wait for routine appointments. For a telephone consultation, you must call by 8.30am. You hold and hope that by the time you’re answered, a slot will still be available. The sick are being pitted against each other just to see their doctor.

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I come from a time when, as a child, my mother would ring our GP if one of the family was sick in the middle of the night, and the doctor would appear at your door within an hour, usually in pyjamas and an overcoat, to treat you in your own bed.

It seems like another era. It was another era.

Today, I live in a socially mixed neighbourhood. There are low-income families in social housing, and wealthier middle-class families with........

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