ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: Apocalypse porn is our new guilty obsession

Last weekend, a group of us sat around sharing photos. Not, as might be expected, of one or other's latest grandchild or a new sweater from Uniqlo but a Safe Hero Flash Hammer, a gadget the size of a penknife.It is said that if you get trapped inside a car after an accident and are unable to escape you can bash your way out through the reinforced glass windows with this tiny tool, even if underwater. All five of us bought one, although the likelihood of any of us needing it is surely small. One particularly cautious character bought four.Among my friends, doomscrolling through anxiety porn seems to have taken over from property porn as a popular armchair activity. And with the new Be Ready edict from the government, urging us all to have three days of water and supplies stored up in case of emergency, the pastime has been turbocharged.While we once spent hours checking Rightmove for houses for sale in our area and flicking through Country Life dreaming of property we would never have, now hours are spent Googling things to save us from the supposedly approaching Armageddon.Personally, I have done absolutely nothing to prep. Among my friends, doomscrolling through anxiety porn seems to have taken over from property porn as a popular armchair activity, writes Alexandra Shulman [File photo]I can't fathom why there has been a run on wind-up radios when you can easily pop in a new battery and I'm fine for baked beans as I already own a larder full of fancy Bold Bean stuff.We've got several years of dinner candles that will see us through should the lights go out and as I am on the hypochondriacal spectrum the medicine cupboard is well provided for. As far as I can tell this kind of emergency initiative has been around in countries such as France, Finland, Sweden and Poland for ages, and ours has popped up just now to make us think the new team in charge are doing something useful.The only thing I might do is store some cash at home since I like shopping too much not to be able to buy anything if the bank cards stopped working. However, the real danger is forgetting where I've stashed it.It's scary how much Halloween's changedReturning on a train from West Sussex on Wednesday evening there were gaggles of girls dressed up as Pretty Woman-style sex workers in micro minis, fishnets, chokers and corsets. They were clearly en route to various Halloween parties, where the dress code has changed in recent years from wizard hats and witches' broomsticks to full-on raunchy costumes.Now on Halloween, the streets are not only filled with hordes of tiny children trick-or-treating but resemble a red light district as women make their way to the festivities.And it's not only very young women who are flaunting brothel style. The Mail's Diary page a few days ago featured posho homeware designer Alice Naylor-Leyland togged up in a black leather bustier accessorised with black horns, while the Countess of Durham posed as a blood-spattered St Trinian's schoolgirl for a big bash.Whatever happened to the simple old spook costume with two holes in a white sheet?Like father, like son in the dating gameSome guys have all the luck. Gorgeous Alexa Chung has confirmed she is engaged to actor Tom Sturridge, who previously had a long relationship with Sienna Miller, with whom he has a daughter, Marlowe. But perhaps it's not surprising: his dad, director Charles Sturridge – responsible for the 1980s TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited – also has form in the glamorous relationship department. Before marrying Tom's mother, actress Phoebe Nicholls (no slouch when it comes to style), he cut a swathe through London's desirable girls including the most beautiful of all, Julie Christie. Alexa Chung has confirmed she is engaged to actor Tom Sturridge, pictured at WimbledonBuilders paper over the cracks... literallyA few weeks ago I wrote about the cracks that have infiltrated the house after the baking hot summer. Now, thankfully, the builders have arrived to do something about it. Excavating some of the damage, they have discovered that at some point the outside plasterwork was filled with newspapers rather than anything more substantial to clog up the cracks.I have no idea whether this was common practice, but I was keen to find out how long ago it had been done. The date on the newspaper used, the Daily Express, revealed the rubbish repairs were done in 2005 – just a year before the owners sold this house to me. Any new buyers can be reassured that 21 years on a better job is being done.So sad Jennifer does not feel good enoughJennifer Lawrence, 36, has given an interview to US magazine The Cut, saying that after the birth of her second child she doesn't think her body is up to scratch and wants to be a 'sexy mom' when she drops her kids at school.It struck me as a curious reason to have a boob job. She is already stunningly good-looking and a first-rate actress, so the idea she felt she didn't look amazing on the school run was sad if not baffling.I've no problem with her having her boobs done – her body, her temple and all that – but it's a pity that a woman with all the blessings she has still doesn't feel good enough.And all the more so when the people she says she wants to be holding her own in comparison with will be other women – fellow school mums or quite possibly Manhattan's squadron of Filipino nannies. Jennifer Lawrence pictured at the Christian Dior fashion show in Paris on September 29Free to roam where a Dragon once roaredThe Times Literary Supplement notes that in autumn 1803 the first steam-powered carriage, known as Trevithick's Dragon (after its inventor Richard Trevithick) roared down an empty Oxford Street. The shops were closed and horse-drawn carriages kept away for the occasion. Now, 223 years on, the London thoroughfare is newly pedestrianised and cars and buses banished. What goes around comes around.