Within hours of the US Air Force completing its surgical strike against Iran's nuclear plants at the weekend, a message popped on to our family WhatsApp thread from the most rational, sane and organised member of the clan.
The subject heading was ‘Instructions in case of a nuclear attack'. I have to admit I did a double take.
At first, I thought it might be a joke. But, as I read, on, it appeared that it was written in deadly earnest.
The message read: ‘As I am the only person in the family with a cellar, get into your cars as fast as possible, close the vents and windows and head straight to my house.
‘When you arrive, strip off your clothes at the front door, rinse off with the bottled water and soap I shall leave ready, place them into the plastic bags I shall also leave and then make your way to the cellar steps where clean clothes will be ready.
‘On the basis that we can all manage for two weeks on a litre of water a day, I will stockpile 280 litres of water.'
I was instantly jolted back to the time when, as a ten-year-old in 1967, I picked up a leaflet from the hallway floor of our house in Liverpool, with exactly the same heading.
I can still remember the look and content of that leaflet, as if it were yesterday: the pale pink paper illustrated with pencil drawings detailing how to place sandbags around the front door and windows in order to protect yourself.
An atomic fallout shelter in Long Island, New York, in 1955. They were often found in basements of schools or even in the cellars of homes during the Cold War era
Once the doors and windows were sealed, it instructed us, we must remain in one room and not go outdoors until we were told to do so by the authorities. Even as a child, the questions ran riot in my brain. Where do we get the sandbags from? Who are the officials who will tell us when to come out and how will they communicate with us?
I later discovered that the leaflet was produced in response to the rising tensions created by the Cold War, which led to the publication of a government advice booklet in 1980 entitled Protect And Survive.
Given the scale of the unease generated by the increasingly grave events in the Middle East, is it now time for the Government to reissue a similar booklet?
In addition to advising all British citizens what to do in the event of an attack, it could offer information on what actions the Government would take in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack.
If I were still a member of the Cabinet, this is a proposal I would raise today.
The Government has a responsibility to reassure people in times of trouble and, in such circumstances, information is king.
In an age when social media is full of ‘fake news', people should have access to a reliable source of information that tells them what to do in the event of an attack and the steps the Government would take to combat it.
That said, I was keen to discover if my relative's WhatsApp had been written in all seriousness, and so gave her a call.
A 1980 booklet produced by the government, which gave advice to the population about how to make their homes and family as safe as possible under nuclear attack
‘Is this a joke?' I asked her. No, she said, it definitely wasn't.
Like so many others up and down the country, recent events had made her anxious and, in my family, cellars have long been seen as places of refuge.
It was where my mother and her sister had sheltered as children during bombing raids in the Second World War.
We were raised on never-ending stories about Liverpool's May Blitz, and that awful morning the family emerged blinking into the daylight to find the windows of the house had been blown in.
My grandmother had cried as she tried to scrape the soot and dust from the butter ration, which - in her rush to reach the safety of the cellar as the sirens sounded - she had left uncovered.
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