A food bank in Guernsey has announced that its stock has run "extremely low," which is a polite British way of saying the cupboards are so bare they'd make Old Mother Hubbard look like a hoarder.
The Guernsey Welfare Service, operator of the island's largest food bank, broke its usual social media silence to issue a rare plea for help, specifically requesting donations of meat, pasta sauce, and tinned fruit - because apparently, even charity has a shopping list.
Service manager Simon Fairclough described the situation as being on a "different level" to anything he had seen before, noting that "most people are struggling" and that the charity is now seeing two or three new clients every single week.
"If we're unable to send a pensioner who lives on their own away with a jar of coffee, that's a pretty sad state of affairs," Fairclough said, in what might be the most devastatingly understated indictment of modern life since someone described Brexit as "a bit of a kerfuffle."
Fairclough explained that the charity doesn't normally post about shortages, but the situation has become dire enough to warrant an exception. "People come in to take food away and there are some things we simply aren't able to give them," he said. "Some are pretty stock items like granulated sugar, coffee and items like that. If we can't provide those basics, it's a bit of a concern."
He noted that the cost of living is rising and acknowledged that "everybody is feeling the pinch" - a phrase that usually means you have to skip the avocado toast, not that you have to skip dinner.
"Our concern is that harder times may yet still come with inflation going up and the full effect of the war in the Middle East having not quite worked their way through yet," Fairclough added, delivering a forecast that makes the weather look positively cheerful.
Currently, the food bank is particularly low on: tinned meat and fish, tinned fruit, tinned vegetables, pasta sauce, jam and marmalade, coffee, sugar, long-life milk, sponge puddings, custard, tinned rice pudding, and cereals. In other words, pretty much everything that isn't air.
Donations can be dropped at Alliance, Coop Grand Marche, Smilers or Waitrose, because even in a crisis, Guernsey knows where to shop.