Society is only ever four missed meals from anarchy, according to an ontological statement passed down from MI5 to George Monbiot via indefinite channels - a damning assessment of the human regressed.
A day without food on a grand scale, then, is the kickstart a supine population needs to commence mass civil unrest - the realisation of the war omnia contre omnes.
Four missed meals is enough to scratch away the thin protective layer that we call society; customs, laws and heuristics which, when their curtain is removed, reveal the partisan competitiveness of six billion atomised souls.
Your sad-eyed author fervently wants to believe all the above, and internalise it as a reason to push back against the species that delivered me. I want to believe in the savagery and selfishness of men and women, and recite it like catechism.
Yet I look around slow, snow-bound England, and everywhere the opposite is apparent. With the weather as it is, the routine of mealtimes are far more likely to be interrupted or missed, and altruism is bubbling to the surface.
I heard about the Scottish couple, frozen into their house since the 9th of December, whose food supplies would have long been consumed were it not for locals on quad bikes bringing them fresh rations on a regular basis. I heard about the newly-employed mobile chemist in Accrington who abandoned his motorcycle when the snow was too heavy to drive through, and proceeded to walk urgent supplies of medicine to patients' houses.
Indeed, civilisation has cast off its jacket and is baring the pulsating vein which is its most basic aspiration - to survive. Yet in times of crisis - from the highest terror of wartime to the lowest which comprises a thick carpet of snow - the instinct is to survive alongside, and not instead of, those who knit together our everyday lives.
