Business As usual - Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

It's becoming something of a theme that almost every book I've written about recently is one that I should have read a while ago - but it's true of this one too. Somewhere between the dislocation of lockdown and suddenly feeling weird about reading something set in retail I really procrastinated on 'Business as Usual' until yesterday when I more or less read straight through it.

The first thing to say about it is it's really good. I can only imagine that there are other publishers who specialise in reprints of women's writing who are kicking themselves for not getting to this first - and if they're not they ought to be. It's a delightful book, funny, warm, quirky, and surprisingly relevant for something from the early 1930's.

It's an epistolary novel told through letters, telegraphs, memo's and a few other bits and pieces. The protagonist is a 27 year old woman, Hilary Fane, who has just got engaged to a rising young surgeon in Edinburgh. The engagement is to be for a year and she has decided to fill it by going to London and getting a job as she's just been made redundant from the library she's been working in.

Job hunting turns out to be harder than anticipated until eventually a very junior, and temporary, clerk's position turns up in Everyman's  - a version of Selfridges. There's a bit I'd like to say about Hilary's personal relationships but they'd be spoilers so I'm going to focus instead on the retail side of the book which is particularly well done.

Maybe it isn't particularly surprising how recognisable the details of life in a large department store still are given that human nature doesn't change that much (and computerized systems don't always drive the efficiencies you might hope for), but one thing that really struck me is Hilary's graduate status. In one of my first tutorials as an undergraduate the tutor in charge (a PhD student who was also a manager in the local Dillon's) told us never to try and patronize book shop staff - they already had their degrees she said. So does Hilary, but it isn't much help to her when she's job hunting.

There is an expectation that people who work in bookshops (or sell wine) will be well educated - at least on the part of people who work in bookshops (and wine). To many people start working in them as students and stay after graduating. Increasingly that's also true of those working in supermarkets as better jobs fail to materialise. It's a particularly hard system on women. Initially shift work can fit well with other interests, later it works around childcare, and there's always the possibility of promotion. Unfortunately you soon hit a bottleneck - the way to get ahead is to move around the business which favours the young and commitment free.

Hilary starts out hoping to find a job that pays £4 a week, but ends up with one that pays £2 10 shillings instead. Her entire income is taken up by rent, transport, and eating which she briefly finds fun, and then a cause for some despair. But Hilary knows her situation is temporary. She has well to do, if not especially well off parents to return to and a solidly comfortable and secure middle class life waiting when she marries. It would be easy to make a joke out of her period of poverty, but the authors don't - instead making a point of discussing the bleaker aspects of a life spent working hard for never quite enough to get ahead on.

They're good on the unglamorous but sometimes surprisingly impressive behind the scenes systems that make a really big shop function, and on company culture. I got really emotional about how Hilary describes Christmas; "I've kept Christmas with the best but I've never provided it before. I hadn't an idea what December could be like for the people who did." If you've experienced this you know. If you haven't it is hard to describe as how exhilarating, exhausting, and hellish it can be.

There is a charming romance in here, and it's mostly a light and funny book, but the details and compassion for the working people it describes are what make it something so much more than a charming period piece for a lazy Sunday afternoons reading. I genuinely cannot recommend this highly enough.

Do have a look at the Handheld list Here

Awakening; Musings on Planetary Survival - Sam Love

I find poetry the hardest thing to write about - which is one very good reason to keep trying to do it. By contrast it's much easier to talk about, which is why I'm now regretting being the first person on this tour - I'd very much like some other peoples reactions to bounce off and to have a virtual conversation with.

Still, somebody has to be first, so here goes. I hadn't heard of Sam Love before I read this collection, and it was only when I started reading that it really clicked that he was American (since then I've done a bit of googling and am slightly less ignorant). I'm also going to suggest that if you don't know him either that you leave off looking him up until after reading some of his work. The author information came at the back of this book, and there's a lot of Sam in his work - another admission - I half thought Sam Love would be a woman when I said yes to this, and now I feel that I shouldn't have made his gender clear. There was something really useful about coming at this collection with no clear idea of age, ethnicity, nationality, or gender; just meeting somebody's words and getting to know them through their poetry.

As far as the poems themselves go they're neither the most beautiful, or complex that I've encountered - but there's an honesty about them which is deeply appealing, and there's no mistaking their meaning either. By Poem number 5, 'Jacuzzi Guilt' I felt like Sam was a friend that I wanted to listen too. It nails the difficulties of balancing the benefits of comfort and convenience with the needs of the planet and the wider population, and it does it with understanding and sympathy. It's a theme that recurs throughout the collection; the poems that touch on it are the ones that resonate most for me.

'Ghost Stumps' is another poem that stood out for me. In it Sam talks about his Victorian era house which both cries out for restoration and represents the wholesale destruction of ancient woodlands. There are issues here that we all have to grapple with - recognising the cost of things we consider beautiful, the cost of our historic legacy (the question of how to acknowledge the good and bad in that is increasingly pressing), and that non of the answers are likely to be simple.

It's a short collection, easy to read in minutes, with poems that that I've come back to a few times in the weeks that I've had this. The central themes are environmental damage and taking personal responsibility for it - 'Blueberry Mourning' is another poem that has stuck with me. There's both hope and despair here and it's definitely a collection that I recommend. The things it's discussing are important and the way it discusses them is no less so. It doesn't lecture or scold, but asks for consideration and compassion along with action.

It's available for £6.99 from Fly on the Wall Press who are doing all sorts of interesting things and are very much worth checking out. 

Things I've written Elsewhere

It's hot and I'm bothered - I don't do well in the heat, I certainly can't knit when the temperature is hitting the mid 30's and Leicester is still in lockdown. I considered writing another post about this, but who needs another rant on a day like today. Instead here's a couple of links to posts I've written for the Shetland Wool Adventures Blog...

Here for 10 books about Shetland textiles - mostly knitting based.

And Here for 10 books more generally about Shetland - where it won't be 30+ degrees tonight and I wouldn't be melting into my chair.

Shetland Wool Adventures is also bringing out a journal soon, which I've also written a piece for and which has some really appealing looking patterns in it. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the finished product and absolutely recommend having a good look around Misa's website!

Scaddiman Cushion Cover - A Knitting Post.

This is a new knitting shape for me - a circle - and I'm really pleased with both Hazel Tindall's pattern and my results.

I made a poor choice of cast on (cable) thinking that the relatively large loops it leaves would be easy to pick up and sew together when it came to joining the two halves of the cushion cover. To be fair they are easy to pick up but they leave a  bit of a gap that makes the seam really obvious. My poor sewing skills don't help with this. I've already started another cushion and have changed the cast on accordingly, though it'll be a while before I see how well the new choice works.

I think this is the first one of Hazel's patterns I've followed, it was beautifully clear and despite how intricate the cushion cover looks it's surprisingly quick and simple to make. The design has a really easy to follow rhythm to it and no tricky surprises so I didn't have to spend ages trying to work out, or having to refer to where I was on the chart. I don't memorise things like this particularly easily so finding patterns that flow as well as this one are an absolute treat.

Scaddiman's heid (also the slightly more vivid scabbieman's heid) is a dialect name for a sea urchin hence my colour choices for this version (which have also turned out well, although I might just slightly rearrange some of them another time). The fun thing about Fair Isle knitting is that changing the colours even a little can dramatically change how you see the patterns and motifs so knittin g up things like this won't get old.

Another bonus was that the cover doesn't use a massive amount of yarn. I used a mix of Jamieson's Spindrift and Jamieson and Smith's jumper weight, mostly part balls to finish up the bits and pieces hanging around from other projects.

The final thing that I appreciated about the pattern is that Hazel suggests 3 different ways to dress the finished cover - my best option was to cut out a piece of card (it turned out to be a ridiculously tough bit of card, I needed a hammer and nail to make a hole in it, and broke the blade of a craft knife cutting it out - but won in the end). It's a small detail really, but seeing a range of choices was helpful, as well as a reminder that it might be worth finally buying some blocking wires when I'm working again.

Beast In View - Margaret Millar

I don't know if it's coincidence, some sort of weird synchronicity with my books, or just the lens that I'm currently seeing the world through at the moment but 'Beast in View' turned out to be another book that was unexpectedly lockdown relevant. It also turns out that I have 2 copies of it, the paper back that I read, and one in a Library of America anthology of four suspense novels by women crime writers from the 1950s edited by Sarah Weinman.

Normally realising I'd bought a duplicate would annoy me, but this time I feel like I've at least read a chunk of the smart and relatively expensive anthology - which is something. There's also a 40s volume in the same series and I very much recommend both. I didn't buy the other volume because I already had a couple of the books in it, they're excellent, as is Sarah Weinman's anthology of short stories; 'Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives'. If you like vintage noir at all and don't yet know Weinman's collections - look her up.

There seems to be a reasonable amount of Margaret Millar's work in print, although in a rag tag of different editions and quite a lot of it collected in anthologies, which is good news because she's an amazing writer. I found her via the Pushkin Vertigo series of which I'm a committed fan - and it's as good a place to start reading her as any. When I bough 'Beast In View' (for the second time) it was not long after Pushkin had started reprinting her and the only title I could find in Waterstones Piccadilly (how I dream of going back there, or any other big book shop, or anywhere not locked down).

It turns out to be the story of Helen Clarvoe. Thirty, living alone in an hotel, estranged from her mother and brother, and obviously struggling with something. One night she gets a strange phone call, it's personal and threatening so she writes to the only person she knows who might help her. Paul Blackshear, wo manages her investments. Paul is lonely, bored, and eventually overcomes his disinclination to help Helen who he becomes increasingly fond of. Meanwhile the caller is widening her net to take in the whole Clarvoe family and she's becoming increasingly spiteful and dangerous.

The ending manages to be both shocking and inevitable. We know something is very wrong, and there are clues along the way but for all the final melodrama Millar always manages to keep things under control. We can infer that there was something very wrong with the Clarvoe family, but there's no particular hint as to what it might have been - just that it's left 3 people very damaged. It's Helen's life stuck in her hotel suite, afraid to go out, that made this feel like a lockdown specific novel to me.

Paul's interest in Helen, and her reaction to it are an interesting detail, as are the strained relations between the 3 Clarvoe's. I'm not sure how the depiction of a specific mental health issue stands up to our current understanding, I think Millar is vague enough in the details to make it work, and there's nothing on the NHS website that openly contradicts what she does in this but it's probably worth sign posting anyway.

The other really interesting, and absolutely harrowing aspect of the book is the treatment of a gay character. It's easy to forget, especially if it doesn't affect you personally, how far we've come from this sort of homophobia, and how important it is not to take that for granted. Altogether it's an absolutely gripping read - literally edge of the seat stuff at times, and as compelling as everything I've read by Millar so far. 

My Husband Simon - Mollie Panter-Downes

This is the first of the British Library's new Women Writers series that I've read, it has set the bar high for whatever follows it either in the same series or more generally in my own personal reading. To be fair the other 2 Women Writers titles already out, and the 5 which are coming all look strong and it's going to be really interesting to see where these go.

There will probably be spoilers in this post.

Nevis Falconer is 21 the author of a successful novel, and staying at an older friends country house for the weekend, when she meets 28 year old Simon Quinn. There's such a spark between them that by the Sunday evening they're staying at a pub losing their respective virginities, already intent on marriage.

We then skip forward 3 years to a crisis point for Nevis. Her writing is not going well, she feels trapped by domesticity and then Marcus Chard, her American publisher turns us at the Savoy and invites her for lunch.

There is some speculation as to what extent 'My Husband Simon' is autobiographical - Nevis is more or less the same age as Mollie when she writes her first book, marries, produces her second book, and the age she would have been when she was writing this one. I'm more inclined to see it as a what might have been, than of her actual life. If it is a self portrait it's in the form of deeply unflattering caricature, but I think it's more likely a parody of a type rather than meant to be any one person. It's certainly a younger version of the type that's forever cropping up in the background of Dorothy L. Sayers, or makes up half the cast of a Nancy Mitford.

There's also a lot of commentary about how temperamentally unsuited Nevis and Simon are, that the only thing that keeps them together is sex, but I'm not sure the reader is in a position to judge this because we see everything through Nevis' eyes, and she's far to self absorbed and unobservant to be reliable. I'm not convinced about the class difference that Simon suggests in his afterword either. If Nevis is socially a cut above Simon it's a very small cut and seems mostly to be based on his father having made his own money.

Nevis says he never struck her as being particularly intelligent, that she can't understand how he built up the business, but it's Edward Quinn who who has the generally patrician markers of a good palate for wine, and a love of reading and books (which he collects in first editions). The deeper problem between the couple is Nevis's immaturity and lack of awareness. When Simon tells her that she misunderstands what intelligence is, damning anyone "...who (a) had not seen the latest play and read the latest novel; (b) did not know who Virginia Woolf was; (c) could not look at a dress and say "My dear, is it Molyneux?" she seems to agree with him. She certainly applies the test to his brother.

I found Nevis fascinating in her awfulness, and Mollie expert in the way she reveals it layer by layer. She's a terrible snob, both intellectually and from a class point of view, staggeringly self absorbed, and totally lacking in empathy - and yet despite it all she's a character I like, maybe because right at the end of the book there is a moment of genuine self awareness, but mostly because of Mollie's skill in writing this monstrously egotistical young woman.

Simon is a presence that threads through the book becoming more real with each episode. It's increasingly clear that he is self aware, and loves her in a way that she's not yet capable of understanding. (Spoiler here) early on Nevis tells us that Simon doesn't want children because it will spoil her figure, later it becomes clear that he wants them very much. Not having them is one of several ways he puts her needs first. When he states that Marcus Chard understands her he is perhaps realising that what Nevis likes about Marcus is that he takes the responsibility of her choices away from her whilst flattering her intelligence.

The original blurb for the book suggests that Nevis's choice will boil down to being a wife or mistress, but I think it's more likely to be between being the wife of a man who will treat her as an equal, or one who will make her into a trophy. And that's maybe the reason Nevis is likable, it's because rather than despite of her flaws. The fact that she's selfish enough to keep fighting even when she's dimly aware that what she's fighting for isn't worth having.

I know 'One Fine Day' is generally considered a better book, and maybe it is, but I prefer 'My Husband Simon'. I love the way it unfolds, there is a brilliantly disturbing scene in a park with some beggars, a few with her servants (On holiday in Venice, Nevis is happy to head for the Lido everyday, later her housemaid tells her she should try Bogner Regis - Nevis is appalled, it is a perfect bit of comedy in the middle of something generally darker). An intriguing description of a Dutch still life in the Quinns house "...a hideous and very valuable Dutch painting of six oysters in surprised conjunction with two dead pomegranates and a dead widgeon." which forms part of the background to a heated discussion about D H Lawrence.

The painting gets mentioned a couple of times - in my time as a student the view was very much that even the dead widgeon could be understood as a sexual metaphor - a theory that slightly postdates this book, and is now somewhat discredited. The agreed symbolism of the oysters and pomegranates has not changed so much, Mollie's wording makes that clear, and she's using this image to signify a couple of things, but Nevis seems unaware that the picture is in it's way every bit as explicit as anything Lawrence wrote.

And so it goes on. This is a goldmine of details about a particular London in the early 30's, there's a checklist of books, the central relationships are drawn with an incredible deftness of touch, and I could go on for a couple more thousand words when really 4 will do  - seriously, consider reading this.
 

Jane Austen; Writing, Society, Politics - Tom Keymer

Officially out later this week, I was sent a copy of this by Oxford University Press to review. It's been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks looking appealing, and so for once I've read it in good time. Part of it's appeal is that it's a short (148 pages) and pocket sized - it makes it an easy book to pick up. It is essentially an introduction to Austen's novels that can be read whole in a few hours, or referred back to on a novel by novel basis.

Taken chapter by chapter you have a decent introduction to each book, or adaptation, which when put together form a decent overview and assessment of Austen's career. The various adaptations are worth thinking about here, and Keymer occasionally touches on them, because I've watched Pride and Prejudice many more times than I've read it. It's easy to forget when they're so ubiquitous that these are only interpretations, and far from complete representations of the novels.

For such a short book there's a lot packed into each chapter, and Keymer makes excellent arguments against some of the charges against Austen and the scope of her writing. The Northanger Abbey chapter persuasively suggests that it's far more than a parody of Gothic fiction for example, and the Mansfield Park section ('The Silence at Mansfield Park') is just as persuasive in how it talks about the way Austen doesn't talk about slavery. She brings it up - and this is a theme throughout her work - but then leaves the reader to join the dots.

The silence Fanny Price is met with when she asks questions is enough to silence her in return. Do we need Austen to spell everything out for us or is it enough to know that this was to sensitive or unpleasant a subject to openly confront in the family circle? And so it goes on.

In 'Sense, Sensibility, and Society' there's some really interesting quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft about the cult of feeling and sensibility (it's hard not to apply them to twitter culture) alongside a defense for Marianne's sensibility against Elinor's stoic sense. Throughout Austen's work is put into context with some of the writers she would have been familiar with and who immediately follow her. My reading list now not only takes in wanting to re read most of her work, but also finally to read Ann Radcliffe, Thomas Love Peacock, and Mary Wollstonecroft (thank god I've already read enough Henry Fielding, and Samuel Richardson not to feel the need to make the experiment again) and a whole lot of other things happily sitting on my shelves.

Major threads of literary criticism around Austen are summerised, and there's a decent list of further reading if you want to go follow that path. For my needs this book is probably enough. It has already enriched my understanding of Austen and will definitely continue to do that as I read more and again. It's concise, informative, and accessible (how often do you find yourself reading about Mansfield Park long after midnight and thinking just one more page, maybe another chapter?) an excellent companion to Austen's that gives plenty to think about without feeling like it's going to get between you and the text*. I thoroughly recommend this one for anybody who has even a passing interest in Austen's work.

*I'm still vaguely annoyed by everything I've ever read about Jane Eyre, all of which has robbed me of a little bit more of any enjoyment I found in that book.

The Temple House Vanishing - Rachel Donohue

This is another book that's been sitting around for a while and that once I started it I couldn't put down. What follows might be considered spoiler adjacent though, so please be aware.

There were to things that really resonated with me in this book. One is that the vanishing part happens to a 16 year old girl in 1990 - which would make the character exactly my age, and the second concerns the relationship of an attractive young male teacher with his 16 year old pupils. A third parallel might be the Colin Pitchfork murders, this was still a live case when we first came to Leicestershire, and created something of the same paranoid atmosphere that Rachel Donahue describes her journalist character growing up with.

At my school there were 2 young male teachers, both would have been fresh out of teacher training and maybe 23-24. One was my form teacher, I didn't particularly like him, he wanted to be everybody's friend, but he also made snide comments about an ex girlfriend - who was the elder sister (by 2 years) of another girl in the class. Presumably because I kept a distance from him he told me for no particular reason that he thought I was manipulative, he asked my mother at a parents evening if I'd been abused. I can't imagine what that was like for her, but 30 years later I'm still furious about it.

I didn't have lessons with the other teacher, who was considered attractive. Around the time I was graduating when he would definitely have been old enough to know better it turned out he was having an affair with an A level student whilst his wife was pregnant. The girl drove her car into a tree hard enough that she was killed in the crash. The inference was that it was suicide.

None of this is particularly close to what happens in 'The Temple House Vanishing' but it's the background against which I'm judging the book, and which makes me think that Donohue's debut is particularly impressive.

Louisa has just one a scholarship to an elite catholic boarding school where the majority of the girls are hostile to her. She does make a friend in Victoria though, who seems both sophisticated, and elusive despite their closeness. There is also the art teacher, Mr Lavelle. He's young, handsome, and by any standard a spectacularly poor choice on the nun's part. The reason for his appointment seems to be that he comes from the right sort of background.

Then at some point Mr Lavelle and Louisa vanish. Coming up for the 25th anniversary of this disappearance a journalist who grew up on the same street as Louisa and vaguely remembers her is given the job of writing a series of profile pieces on the main characters in the drama. The novel unfolds in a series of flashbacks which allow Louisa to tell her story, whilst the journalist (who I do not remember being named) does her own research.

I think it's clear from the blurb that the teacher pupil relationship is going to be troubling, but Donohue keeps its exact nature ambiguous all the way through (please don't draw any conclusions from anything I say here), and her portrayal is excellent. I could sense all the way through that something wasn't right with all the relationships at the heart of this book, but every single character is nuanced and complete in a way that precludes easy judgements about them.

There are nods to Shirley Jackson here, and I think other writers too - things that struck a chord but which I couldn't quite place within the over all gothic atmosphere. The whole thing is beautifully balanced to give a sense of unease, and to make the reader ask difficult questions without giving easy answers. It's a clever, rich, and rewarding book.

Blitz Writing - Inez Holden

Not everything is going to plan today, the longish walk I planned turned into a medium walk after it started raining hours before forecast, and dinner is stubbornly refusing to defrost (I didn't make a plan B and don't want to brave Tesco's in the rain for something shit but not that cheap). I have finished a couple of books that have been sitting around for far to long though, and they've both been excellent, and my sister sent me stroopwafels in the post - so on balance I feel like I might just be winning.

The first of the excellent books is Inez Holden's 'Blitz Writing' from Handheld Press. It's worth signing up for their newsletter, and definitely worth following them on facebook for details of the sale box. I can also commend their services for sending presents to other people. I've been lazy about this in the past and default used amazon but will where possible be buying direct from small publishers now.

A very long time ago I read a short story by Holden (Death in High Society), and for years kept an eye out for more of her work, without success, until I'd more or less forgotten about her. The story was the sort that sticks with you though and I'm extremely pleased that Handheld are reprinting some of her work (there's more of her wartime writings coming next year). I can only hope that some of her fiction comes back into print as well.

'Blitz Writing' includes 'Night Shift' which is a lightly fictionalised account of a week on night shift in a factory engineering parts, and 'It Was Different at the Time' which is a more general memoir of the period from April 1938 to August 1941. There's an overlap in events between the two, but 'Night Shift' was published first, which I guess is why it comes first in this edition but I'd actually recommend reading 'It Was Different At The Time' before 'Night Shift'.

'It Was Different At The Time' provides a whole lot of context for 'Night Shift' and expands on what we know of Holden's views about the people she's working with - she's sympathetic but unsentimental about the people she meets. It's a view of London's working class women that's often absent from the more common middle class memoires and diaries of the period that have come my way.

I found 'It Was Different At The Time' more compelling as well, the Monday chapter of 'Night Shift' was interesting but it didn't suck me in, which is probably why it took me so long to get round to reading this properly, by contrast I raced through 'It Was Different At The Time' which is now full of underlining's and I want to read the first half of this book again armed with the understanding the second half has given me.

Blitz aside the thing that really struck me about 'Night Shift' is how little has changed for women working in menial jobs. The concerns about wages being paid properly, the way they talk and complain, the relationship with the men in charge, and their relationships with each other will all be familiar to anybody who has worked in a low paid job with a lot of other people, especially a lot of other women. Other people must have written about this, but I can't think of another example off hand of anyone doing it with the empathy or respect that Holden does.

'It Was Different At The Time' is fascinating because it records the build up to the war and different attitudes - there's a bit about racism that seems particularly relevant to our contemporary world, and Holden's London is perhaps surprisingly multi-cultural, certainly compared to films, tv series, and all those other middle class accounts I've read. It shows more of Holden herself too, and the different social worlds she flits in and out of.

One of the joys of Handheld books is that they come with excellent introductions, notes, and in this case a list of works cited and further recommended reading. Kristin Bluemel does a brilliant job of introducing Holden and laying out the salient points of her life - she is someone I'd like to know much more about. I really recommend reading this both for how good it is and because of the slightly different perspective it brings to territory that turns out not to be as familiar as I'd come to think. 

Leicester Lock down Part 2

Leicester is still in lock down, it's due to be reviewed on the 18th, with rumours that it will be extended. I wasn't sure about writing this post, but after finding the last week really hard I'm doing it partly because it helps me deal with it, and hopefully because if anybody reading this finds themselves in a similar situation they might find it helpful as well.

The first thing is that still being in lock down whilst the rest of the country is coming out of it is much harder than I anticipated. It feels weird seeing friends doing things whilst I'm still stuck at home. The idea of pubs being open is frankly frightening, but the school situation seems worse. Leicester's schools were closed again which sends a fairly specific message which is hard to reconcile with increased relaxation elsewhere. There's no sense in which it feels like we're all in this together, it's very much a case of feeling left behind.

The city centre is emptier than it's been since early April, although nothing is shifting the hardcore group of drinkers who have colonized the middle of my local park. There will be anything uo to 30 of them at a time, they're not daunted by the threat of virus (although as less than fit looking men in their 50's and 60's you'd hope they might be) heavy rain, or the police who regularly come through and ask them to move on.

They're easy enough to avoid, and I suppose the fact they're their at all means that they're not trying to get into pubs and bars outside the lock down zones, and why would they? The park with a bag of cheap lager is cheaper and less regulated than any pub is going to be. I still find them intimidating both in numbers and for the All Lives Matter football shirts they favour. There are noticeably less younger people around.

If you live, as I do, near the centre of the lock down zone the distance to leave it is a deterrent in itself. If you live on the edge of it I wonder how tempting it is to ignore the new regulations? I've certainly been surprised by the number of people suggesting that I pack up and clear out for a week or two. This is hard as well because it's really tempting to do exactly that and the reality is that I've been careful enough for there to be near zero chance of having come into contact with the virus - one of the things I'm really struggling with at the moment is how hard I find it to make myself leave my flat. I'm more worried about lack of exercise than anything else at the moment, but if we don't follow the rules where does that leave us (quite apart from the possibility of a fine)?

There seems to be a growing conviction that this is primarily a problem that's caused by, and effects, the city's Asian and black population, which is both disturbing and outright dangerous. The worst part of this is that it's a narrative that the government seems comfortable encouraging, partly I assume in an effort to discredit local Labour leadership.

There still doesn't seem to be any really clear explanation of why Leicester has been hit so badly, especially compared to other cities with similar demographics and industries. Leicester is a poor city, the council has had the same swinging budget cuts that everyone else has had under a decade of austerity measures, and you can see the damage that's done everywhere.

The sweat shop set ups in the textile industry are no secret. Sarah O'Conner wrote about them here 2 years ago, and again earlier this month here, which includes this link from UK Parliments website that lists how our current government rejected every recommendation to clean up the garment industry. This Guardian article which criticises Priti Patel's comments on sweat shops highlights further problems. It's an issue that's been raised over and over again, but ignored. The news this weekend that a farm in Hereford has 73 confirmed cases amongst it's pickers (here) indicates it's not just factories that are a problem.

Brexit was bad enough for bringing the racists out of the woodwork, Covid is compounding that. The very last thing Leicester needs is a rise in racial tension. The people who live here are being badly let down by a government that either doesn't have a plan or refuses to communicate it. It looks like there won't be any extra help for businesses (here), and altogether things look bleak.