Six pounds of tea, a pound of coffee as an occasional luxury. A stone of salt butter in an earthenware jar. A stone of split peas. To make the beginning of our stay more pleasant Terry had bought six tins of fruit, a box of water biscuits, two dozen fresh eggs, ten pounds of ham in half-pound parcels; she bought them at a dozen different shops; two pounds of frying steak, a stone of carrots, a stone of onions and two loaves of bread. We had a small bag of turnips left over from what our garden grew, and a bag with a hundredweight of potatoes, which almost broke my back when I fetched it to the cave.

We had bought enamelled dishes for picnics in Woolworth’s long ago, and we brought them. We packed them in a small bath which would be useful for washing dishes and clothes. We had three soup-plates, three mugs, two small enamelled basins, two good china cups from our own cupboard, four knives and forks and table-spoons and tea-spoons, a ladle and two wooden spoons.

We brought good pans, of cast aluminium or iron, to stand rough usage. We had a large cast aluminium frying-pan and an iron stew-pan, a four-pint aluminium kettle and a gallon iron kettle, an aluminium tea-pot, an iron griddle for baking, a deep iron pan to make soup or for roasting.

A small barrel, packed with tools, would hold water, if there was a drought. We had also a large galvanized iron pail to carry water.

We brought four towels and ten pounds of soap in bars, and an old cotton sheet for washing dishes or making bandages. I had a roll of surgical tape and iodine and a jar of vaseline in my pocket. A bottle of whisky completed our medicine chest.

Amongst the things we forgot to bring were nails, and a wedge to split roots. These at least were missed almost at once. Before we lived long in the cave we discovered many other things we should have taken. But I had alum for skins and saltpetre to make match for flint and steel, if our store of matches ran down.

It was the commonplace necessities we found ourselves most apt to forget. I remembered four pounds of tobacco, but I forgot matches. When I found eight dozen boxes amongst the other stuff I recollected that matches were not on our list, even on the list we made in the easy winter time when we played at planning our life in a cave.

‘You did remember matches,’ I said to Terry. ‘If we hadn’t matches! The one essential and I forgot all about them.’

‘Thank Duncan,’ she replied. ‘When I saw him, he asked for a match; there wasn’t one in the house; I flew to Newtonmore and bought all I could get.’

‘We were lucky,’ I said with a great breath of relief.