Originally published in The Clifton Courier, April 15, 2020

I’ve bought a lot of ill-thought-out stuff lately.

What with all this uncertainty and confusion and general gloom, I’m a little on edge. And when you’re a little on edge, you can act in odd ways.

I’ve been going through the peaks and toughs of COVID anxiety and eerie calm that comes from passive acceptance. I swear my state of mind is nothing to be concerned about – at least, no more concerning than usual.

But I’ve noticed my shopping behaviour is a little different. I know I’m not the only one to come back from the shops with something I’d probably not buy in different times.

These items were probably not essential in an essential goods and services sense, but at the time they felt entirely necessary.

It’s not so much panic-buying, but buying things when you’re not really yourself. As such, I don’t want to use the phrase “panic-bought”. So here are a few things I have recently bought… on impulse:

Tigernut flour: Yeah, so apparently this is a nut-free alternative for almond meal and almond meal is often used in the place of flour in some super rich, decadent gluten-free cakes. So this probably makes tigernut flour the most alternative flour alternative I’ve ever beheld. It came into my possession last week sometime. It was at that point in the pandemic when everyone seemed to be baking their feelings so there was no flour left – except for this stuff. I picked it up because I wanted to know what tigernut flour was and then realised that I’d touched it with my grubby hands and didn’t want to play the guessing game over whether I’d infected the packet with actual germs or just the essence of me, so I bought it. It has all these stern warnings on the pack practically screaming at me that it’s not a suitable alternative for flour which makes it quite intimidating. So I probably should just try to bake the recipe on the bag but it’s also highly likely that I’ll go rogue just to prove that bastard of a packet wrong. Again, my state of mind is nothing to be concerned about.

A comically-large canvas: A few weeks back I went to the art supply shop to make sure I had enough paint to get me through These Uncertain Times. I’d also decided that, after a few practice runs on paper, I was ready for a canvas. But to get to the art shop, I had to go through the nearly baron halls of a shopping centre. Most of the stores had been shuttered up. The lights seemed dimmer. There were two police officers patrolling the halls. It was all very post-apocalyptic. I began to have a bit of a panic attack and just wanted to grab what I needed and get out of there. But because the shop was having a 50 per cent off sale and every other basic white girl had taken up painting (guilty!), there were no normal-sized canvases left. All they had were the ones that looked like they would have been big enough to save Rose, Jack and even that delightful Mr Andrews in Titanic. After painful deliberation, I grabbed the most-reasonable sized one and high-tailed it out of there. This was the day after our Prime Minister classified puzzles as essential items, so I reasoned I was allowed to buy art supplies. But the sheer size of this canvas didn’t scream “essential” to me. It was so big I had to lay the back seats down and put it into my ride through the boot. I had to store it under the house. When I took a photo to send to my sisters, I used a wheelie bin for scale and realised my canvas was one wheelie bin squared. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know if anyone snapped of a photo of me struggling to cart that canvas through the shops, but if they did, it definitely deserves to be a meme.

A carton of beer in cans: My parents have never really forced us girls to confirm to their way of thinking. We were allowed to decide if we wanted to get baptised. We were allowed to freely play our Britney Spears album. It was a very liberal household. But there’s always been strongly implied that glass stubbies were the superior vessel for beer. Cans were for Heinz spaghetti and condensed tomato soup. I’ve carried this belief with my into adulthood and will always opt for a stubby over a tinnie, no matter how much tinnies fit into the ironic Australiana worship we’re still seeing in modern meme culture (which, I have to admit, can be great fun to play up to). But I went into the bottle shop after the canvas incident and was still jumpy. There was only one carton of the beverages I was after in plain sight and I wanted to get myself home before I began hyperventilating so I didn’t ask the shop assistant about stubbies. I just grabbed it and went. I mean, it’s what’s on the inside that counts anyway, right?

White high-waisted shorts: This brand of shorts is prefect – they have good pockets, a flattering fit and this little clip I can hook my keys too. I have them in navy, which is a sensible colour for me to have in shorts because I:

1. Like sitting on the ground
2. Am a bit of a grot
3. Involuntarily wipe my hands on whatever bottoms I’m wearing

These are also the exact reason why having light-coloured shorts is a terrible idea. I mean, this isn’t a Degrassi episode, I’m not worried about squirting my uterine lining all over them, but the are going to get very dirty very easily. I’m also shithouse when it comes to stain removal, so this was extra dumb.

Three six packs of hot cross buns for one person: I’m hoping to emerge from this self-isolation situation completely and totally ripped, so buying decadent seasonal breads is a counterproductive move. I’m also someone who hates wasting food, so it’s not like I’d be able to live with myself if I threw perfectly good food in the bin. The first pack was a warehouse share special, but my housemates weren’t keen until I sliced it up with a cheese platter. The second pack saw me eating a luxe brioche chockie chip bun every day for a six days. I turned the other pack into a bitchin’  rhubarb and apple crumble which you can bet your sweet bippy will soon be he subject of an unimaginative recipe filler post.