Don't panic!

Pay attention: this is important, and it directly affects you, your family, and your impending Easter holidays.

The union which represents charity collectors is likely to go on strike over the break, so it's vitally important that you all rush out and invest as much as possible in my JustGiving page for the Beatson right now, or the planet will surely slip from orbit and spin into the sun. Which will melt all the Creme Eggs.

Seriously. Get to the bank. Queue up. Take a jerry can.

Then, once you've done that, queue up again to put it all back in since the page only takes electronic donations, and transfer it all here: www.justgiving.com/puregns

Done that? Good. You know it makes sense.

I was considering other methods of giving. There was, for instance, the deluxe package, in which for £250K to the JustGiving page you can join Clare and me for a curry in our flat and have your say in influencing blog policy. But I've withdrawn that one on the grounds that it's corrupt, not to mention quite creepy, and I don't want Peter Cruddas anywhere near the place.

Instead, for the same sum (plus VAT) you can have a very expensive pasty in a paper bag. It has to be a take-away, I'm afraid, but it's guaranteed not to be cold, or to cool down until you're well off the premises and could be reasonably argued to have eaten it while it was hot.

As you can tell, I've been spending far too much time in front of the BBC news channel again. I was off sick last week, you see. Just a cold, thanks for asking, but apparently I'm just as entitled to them as anyone without cancer, so I'm making sure I get my fair share before the country runs out.

And at least my three day phlegm-fest on the couch was educational. I learned two very important things: men who have a lot of money and yet have never had a proper job should not really be allowed to run the country; and people who take their advice despite this are really quite special.

I use the word "special", you understand, in that kind new way we’ve developed because we're not allowed to say "no' right" any more. Possibly they think the government is talking directly and personally to them – that would certainly account for their surprise that they weren't alone when they turned up on the forecourts.

In England, of course, it's to be expected. The UK has a Conservative government - there are allegedly some liberals in the mix too, but I’ve discounted that on lack of evidence - so it’s only natural that they advise conserving things: the level of petrol in your four by four; a garage full of buckets of highly volatile hydrocarbons; the gene pool (by stocking your garage with buckets of highly volatile hydrocarbons).

Thing is, here in Scotland, Conservative advice doesn’t generally go down all that well. And while that is comforting because, for instance, our healthcare remains un-sold-off, while down south David Cameron is showing how much he loves the NHS by wrapping bits of it up to give to his friends, it’s worrying because we had petrol panics here, too.

So who was on the forecourts? Not Tories, because we have fewer of them than we have pandas, and with less chance of growing more. And now they've dispersed, we've no way of finding out. They're out there, around us, and we don't know who they are, like the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's quite scary.

All I can say is this: Don't panic. Don't show fear, they can smell you. Keep on reading books and papers with long words. Put on Radio Four, it confuses them.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

And leave me some bloody petrol. I want to drive to the Lake District on Friday.