In life, is not very often that a real emergency arises, and a real guardian angel presents itself to save the day.

I awoke the other morning, everything was as it should be. It was early, about 7.30 but that's when I get up. Living in a van and having no TV you tend to go to bed fairly early which means no lying in until 10.00 (for me anyway). It would be at least another hour and a half until one of my more somnolent neighbours would be conscious

Before I do anything with my day, I need tea. And I need a fair amount of it. Not a little cup with a handle, I mean a big old bad boy mug, filled a couple of times once emptied. Luckily I have one of those insulated camping coffee mugs with a handle. Not only does it hold not far short of a pint, it keeps it hot too for anything up to about an hour.

So I flopped out of bed and in an automaton state, filled the kettle with water, popped it on the hob and grabbed my lighter to ignite the gas flame. To my horror, the lighter failed to work. After several attempts, I realised it was dead, it was an ex-lighter. No problem, I shall just use some matc..... but I have no matches, I have no spare lighter. This is bad. At least if I were a soap dodger I would have an endless supply of lighters, matches, flame throwers and other such smoking paraphernalia. But no, I am a non smoker who has no need of a lighter. I was scuppered, no means to light my stove, no neighbours awake from whom I could ponce a lighter, no means of heating water. How would I survive this life threatening situation? I wracked my brains and then a thought came to me.

For Christmas, my stepfather, Malcolm had assembled what on first impressions might appear to be a fairly useless present, but on further reflection, and this gripping tale is a case in point, a very smart idea indeed. He had put together, in a 20 year old Golden Virginia tin, a small survival kit. The contents of this small tin enable me to catch fish, stitch wounds, ensnare rabbits and other household pets, navigate, cut, sew, perform open heart surgery and of course light a gas burner. I opened the tin and saw the credit card sized tool which contained a compass, a knife, many other things including a strikey flint thing for bushcraft firelighting. This did the job just right. When I took a further look in the tin, I also found waterproof matches and a cigarette lighter.