While the imposition of a ‘lockdown’ on the UK, as part of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, has seemingly eased the problems caused by panic buyers stripping supermarket shelves of goods, some communities still fear the possibility of being overwhelmed by such bands of retail brigands. “It’s a real worry – the idea of those bands of brigands who have been targeting supermarkets in gthe towns and cities, descending on them en masse and stripping the shelves bare, so that nobody else can buy even the most basic of foodstuffs, turning up here because they think we might present easier pickings,” opines eighty two year old Mavis Wipple, who lives in the remote Devon village of South Gropeton. “We’ve only got the one village shop which, thankfully, has, so far, remained relatively well stocked. But we’ve been seeing increasing numbers of complete strangers turning up at the shop and filling the backs of their BMW estates and 4x4s with bags full of shopping.” Wipple and her neighbours quickly became worried that the panic buyers, finding more and more restrictions being placed upon them by supermarkets, are clearly seeking new targets for their brigandry. “They are obviously testing the waters, scoping the place out, before they descend in their hordes,” she says. “I mean, we must have seemed wide open to them – no security guards at the store, the police station closed years ago and the next nearest one is thirty miles away. It was a real worry: with next to no bus services, most of us residents are reliant upon the local shop – if these brigands were allowed to strip it bare, we’d be in real trouble!”

Consequently, Wipple and the other residents decided to recruit their own security to protect their village from the possible predations of panic buying big city bandits. “I got the idea after seeing the Magnificent Seven on the telly – the original, obviously, not that bloody awful remake,” she confides. “So a bunch of us got our pensions cashed, gathered to together our valuables – a set of genuine Denby dinner plates, minus one that got broken ten years ago (and one of the others has a crack in it), in my case – and went off to Barnstaple to see if we could hire seven gun men to defend our village.” Incredibly, the elderly villagers eventually managed to sign up seven local self-styled hard men to come back to South Gropeton with them. “We had to trawl through a lot of pretty dodgy dives to find people who would work that cheaply,” Wipple recalls. “But we followed the template of the film and offered them twenty quid apiece for the whole job (and as most of them will probably die, as they always do in the films, we’ll doubtless save some money that way).”

Of course, this West Country version of the Magnificent Seven doesn’t quite match up to the star studded seven of the original film. “Our lot are led, not by Yul Brynner, but by some fat bald bloke called Steve, who with a rusty shotgun,” says Widdle. “While our equivalent to Steve McQueen is this gap toothed yokel called Bert, who wields a mean pitchfork and rides a sit-on lawn mower.” Other members of this not-so-magnificent seven include a former fork lift truck driver who can throw apples with unerring accuracy and a homeless man who is a dead shot with a pea shooter. “We even have an equivalent to Robert Vaughn – you know, the gunfighter who has lost his nerve,” Widdle enthuses. “Well, we assume he’s lost his nerve – he’s always off his face on cider. But on a good day, he’s the most accurate pisser we’ve ever seen. He can hit an empty beer can with this golden stream from fifteen feet away.” The seven have already set about fortifying the village against possible panic buying raiders, putting up new walls and nets and digging covered pits with which to trap any who venture into South Gropeton. “They’ve promised that none of the bastards will get out alive,” says Widdle. “Mind you, we’ve had some trouble with the council over those new walls – they say that they don’t meet building standards, let alone have planning permission.”

So far, the presence of the seven seems to have deterred any panic buyers from trying to raid the village shop. A success which has inspired other communities to try hiring their own private security forces. “There’s no doubt in my mind that it is only a matter of time before we’ll be overrun by gangs of weirdos with Mohicans riding customised motorcycles and hot rods with blades on their wheels, just like in those Mad Max films,” says seventy four year old Arnold Pontner, who lives in the neighbouring village of North Gropeton. “Consequently, we’re looking into hiring a band of crack mercenaries to protect our village – we tried to contact the A-Team until it was pointed out that, thanks to social distancing measures, all four of them couldn’t be in that van of theirs at the same time.” Even in larger towns and cities, some residents are giving consideration to hiring mercenaries. “I’ll tell you, it was getting so bloody difficult to actually buy anything at local supermarkets, me and my mates at our retirement complex seriously thought about hiring mercenaries to accompany us to the shops,” explains sixty nine year old Plymouth resident Charlie Tick. “Even when we tried going to those early morning OAP only shopping hours, the places were overrun with these bloody panic buyers, snatching everything off the shelves before we could get to it. While some of them pretended to be old, wearing grey wigs and using fake walking frames, others were just brazenly shoving their way in – supermarket staff seemed powerless to stop them and enforce their own rules!” Until the situation calmed with the introduction of the lockdown, Tick and his neighbours had been looking into hiring soldiers of fortune to accompany them on shopping trips, forcing panic buyers aawy from the shelves at gun point. “A few good kickings from some ex-Special Forces types would have soon put them off,” says Tick.

Many have argued that if the police were to to do their jobs properly, then there would be no need for vulnerable pensioners to hire bands of mercenaries to protect their shopping. “The thing is that the coppers are more interested in enforcing this lockdown, harassing ordinary citizens for alleged infractions,” says Pontner. “They’re just drunk on power, tracking dog walkers with drones, arresting people for driving their cars – it is outrageous!” Pontner has been particularly aggrieved by police attempts to dictate what constitutes ‘essential’ supplies when people go out shopping. “Last week I was stopped coming out of WH Smiths in Barnstaple – I had to take three bloody buses to get there, taking over three hours and another two back, taking another three hours – and was accused of having left my house to buy non-essential items,” he rages. “All because I’d bought a bloody pencil! For God’s sake, newsagents are allowed to stay open, so surely you can legally buy whatever they have on their shelves?” In another incident, a local farmer had his tractor pulled over by police on the pretext that he was making an unnecessary journey. “He was going to tend to his sheep,” says Pontner, “You know what he bloody police told him – that the sheep could feed themselves on the grass in their field, so there was no need for him to go out to them in person and if a few died, it was just natural selection. Bloody little Hitlers – is it any wonder people are hiring their own protection? Soon we’ll need those mercenaries to protect us against our own police”