We have odd shortages, here in the UAE. A certain item at the largest groceries will suddenly disappear. And may not return for a month. Or two. This cereal. That soup. A brand of tea. It’s hard to predict, other than something will be missing.

I have a theory on this … and I am contemplating it anew because of what appears to be another shortage of my favorite snack food on this side of the world, the “McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestive” cookies. Or biscuits, as the British inventors of the product would call them.

After a month, this winter, of no McVitie’s dark chocolate cookies to be had on the island of Abu Dhabi, they made a return of about three weeks … and now they again cannot be found on shelves.

Imagine, then, being in Europe or North America, and your biggest supermarket, which devotes significant shelf space to a brand, suddenly does not have that item available for a month.

Doesn’t happen, does it.

That happens here fairly often, and this is my theory.

Very little food is produced in the UAE — because it is a chunk of desert waste, aside from a few arable acres in the north of the country.

Thus, nearly everything we eat comes here via ship or even plane. Plums from South Africa, apples from France, bananas from the Philippines, carrots from California, McVitie’s from the factory in Australia.

The UAE is a significant market — about 7 million people — but not an enormous one; numerous cities have more people in and around them than does the UAE, en toto.

Thus, we may not be at the top of the list when it comes to all the specifics inside those loads of food that arrive daily and keep us alive. That, or it’s just plain mismanagement involving producer or shipper, for one of their less-than-critical markets.

And if that item is, like a 12-count box of McVitie’s dark chocolate cookies, something that does not take up a tremendous amount of cargo space and does not go bad in a few days … I envision that the supply can be interrupted by the failure to sail of a single ship.

I have a mental image of my McVitie’s about to be lowered into the hold of some freighter … when some stevedore comes along with instructions to pack the beef, instead. And my cookies sit in a warehouse for a month.

Thus, even though we live in a land where nearly every food craving known to man can be answered by a visit to your neighborhood Lulu grocery store, we find ourselves buying in bulk those things we have noted to sometimes disappear.

Especially McVitie’s with dark chocolate.

A year ago, I did a list of Stuff I Eat/Drink Here But Not at Home, and McVitie’s were at the top of the list. I generally have three a day. Not two. Not four. The really are very good. It’s the dark chocolate, of course.

Thus, even though it has been two weeks without my cookies, we still have three boxes on hand, which gives the system (which, yes, must be powerfully complicated) another two weeks to get things figured out.

After that, I will be mightily annoyed and reduced to eating McVitie’s Digestive cookies made with nothing better than milk chocolate.

Oh, the horror.