“The one thing that baffles me completely about all of this is the toilet rolls!” laughs Brenda Graham. “Why are people stockpiling toilet rolls?”

She grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War and has been reminiscing about how times have changed when there is a state of national emergency.

“Back then we used Izal, it was shiny on one side and it was totally useless,” she adds. “But we generally didn’t go out and buy toilet rolls, we used newspaper – though it’s a joke among my friends that we were posh and used the Radio Times!”

When I suggest reverting to using newspapers could cause an issue with the sewers, there’s another burst of Brenda’s infectious laughter: “Why would the drains have been better 60 years ago?”

Born near Ireby and later growing up in Cockermouth, where her father was a woodwork teacher, the mum-of-two says being creative was the key to tasty meals in the post-war era.

“Rationing didn’t finish until the 1950s – it went on for a long time,” she adds.

“I was very lucky because I lived between Boltongate and Mealsgate, in the countryside, so we were able to grow our own vegetables. We kept rabbits and pigs for meat. Even those with the smallest gardens kept hens.

“You used to make everything out of every little.

“My mother used to make what was called a salmon mould. If you got a small tin of salmon it was an absolute treat. You mashed it up and mixed it with egg and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, then you put it in the cold to set. You cut it up to go with salad. You could serve four or five people from a tiny tin.

“She also used to make lentil pie. The only meat in it was little strips of bacon and they flavoured the lentils.

“Because we kept bees we got an allowance of sugar. I haven’t the faintest idea how it happened but the idea was the bees ate the sugar and made honey! We used it to sweeten lots of things. My mother did an awful lot of baking.”

Preserving eggs in a solution called isinglass, frying rissoles made from leftover meat and veg, and shaking the last slivers of soap in a jar filled with water to make a jelly that could be used to do the washing-up were other common household tricks.

And 82-year-old Brenda, who lives at Caldew Maltings in Carlisle, says she thinks it’s the speed the coronavirus seemed to arrive that has sent the population into panic mode.

She adds: “Things in the war happened gradually, this has been dumped on us.

“You’ve got to learn to make a meal out of what you have, not what you wish you had. You look in the cupboard and think ‘what have we got in?’

“Make do and mend, we used to say. Some people don’t understand how things are made, though my mother didn’t go out to work and that does make a big difference.

“I don’t think life is easier now than then.

“People are not used to having to do without.

“When I was a child the world wouldn’t have moved on so fast.”