The Poisonous Suburbs

Sometimes I forget. I hate to write negative things, but sometimes reality is quite shocking even in this pretty suburb that thinks such a lot of itself.

I have been ill for a few days, bad enough to take to my bed and not go to the studio: I didn't want to pass anything on to anyone else, but also I've not felt so tired since a couple of years ago when (I think) I had a bout of Covid, pre-testing days. I've done two negative tests and had a normal temperature, but have been an addled-brained flop of a person, slouching around and completely devoid of energy.

I went to our local posh supermarket today to stock up on paracetamol and tins of beans. I bought an extra six-pack of beans for the food bank, and at the checkout I said to the checkout person that I would like to put them in the food bank box before returning to pay for the rest of the stuff. The tins were heavy, and I felt a bit post-viral feeble.

The checkout person called me back straight away. 'You've left your purse here, and there are so many pickpockets around at the moment. And anyway not the food bank!'

Then they set off on a tirade where pickpockets and their ease of working in gangs due to the proximity of the tube station to the High Street, was delivered mixed in with 'Don't Give Food To The Food Bank They Have Three Holidays A Year You Look After Yourself They Don't Need It', and all sorts of really bigoted stuff about how well off poor people really are.

I couldn't get a word in edgeways, and was honestly feeling too rough to argue with her today. So I had to carry the beans for the food bank along with my own beans in one go, because the person at the checkout didn't think I should be donating them.

I know this probably sounds pathetic, doesn't it, not standing up to such vicious and irrational bigotry. The thing is, it completely took me by surprise; all I was doing was going shopping and I came home wishing that I lived somewhere else, and not here. Alongside the staff member in the Post Office who told me that 'Boris is doing a good job' during the pandemic, the person behind the till in the Oxfam shop a couple of years ago who was complaining loudly about 'asylum seekers' to a customer, and the person in the local Rymans saying that Sadiq Khan 'ought to be shot' (I complained about that one to the company, but that staff member is still there!), you'd be forgiven for wondering if this pretty suburb is Hell in Disguise.

The worst thing about such hatred is people's insistence on sharing it as though they expect everyone to agree with them. I can not understand this in the slightest. 

It makes me afraid to go shopping again in case I have to listen to any more venomous outpourings.