Young blood

One evening in February I was on my way home from work when I saw a group of people heading towards me.

Faced with potential danger I behave as though I am 6' tall rather than the 5'3" I actually reach and my fantasy Dobermans are panting at my side, giving an outward show of respect to those involved unless the mood changes. I do not speed up and sometimes even slow down but without hesitating or giving ground. In this way I moved through a group of young males, ranging in age from late teens to a couple who could not have been older than eight years old. That shocked me and I risked looking at them as I passed. It was cold, dark and past 8pm on a week day. I wondered if their parents knew where they were or even cared. They certainly weren't dressed for the weather.

"Am I goin' to hear a smash, Ash?!" one of them called out, as they swarmed around a bus shelter. But it was left unscathed as they moved up the street like a shoal of fish, suburban piranhas. It occurred to me that, in their own way, the older members of that group were caring for the youngest and however much I disapproved of their method, they were filling the gap left by parents, often mothers, unwilling or unable to handle the children they have bred.

Six months later I can remember the sudden urge I had to take them all home, to scrape enough money together for a pizza - to share if not to nourish - and be mother. That pang was a strange and unfamiliar feeling, I am not the maternal type, but for a few moments I felt their need so deeply that it made a dent in the cynical shell that protects me from daft notions like that. I suspect that I am on my own with this sense of concern, especially after recent events.

The rioting, looting mobs that filled our screens for two days have led to all the usual calls for greater parental discipline, harsher police tactics and support for deprived areas. I find that I am tired of hearing them, probably because I've heard it all before so many times. Perhaps I am old enough now to recognise that there is no single solution, that any effective repair to the confidence of business owners and residents will be haphazard and largely accidental. There seems to be a growing acceptance that it will take a change in mindset rather than funding to fix things and it is tragic that it has taken so long for this to sink in.

Many are shocked, as I was, that children whose ages must be in single figures were not safe in their homes, watching the chaos on television. Instead they were wandering through the debris of ruined shops, following the example of their older friends and taking the leftovers. Some were even treated as porters, their innocent arms filled with loot by adults too stupid to realise that every move was being recorded on CCTV.

Loving parents who hang on each childish word, lavish time on home cooked meals and lose sleep over unsatisfactory school reports might as well be from another planet to those who raised these tiny looters. My lip used to curl at the mere thought of the selfish lazy creatures who have helped shape our future citizens but scorn has been replaced by a sense of fear that there are so many of them.

A former colleague became pregnant at sixteen by a man whose lack of interest in his son was a regular topic of our largely one sided conversations. I became a near expert on her son’s failings, including his own poor record as a father. Having set the example for his spending habits through her own need for instant gratification she spent hours on her phone berating him about it. Last year I was trapped in a waiting room with several others listening to another woman’s very similar, loud conversations, full of "I" and "me", on her mobile as she described at some length the hard time she was having.

The call that left the greatest impression on me was the one she made to her son. She complained that he wasn't with her, that he had spent the weekend "smoking", that he had failed in every way imaginable, yet when she ended the call and looked around at us she smiled, satisfied that she had such an audience for her woes, oblivious to our vinegary contempt. What a martyr. I could imagine the teenager on the other end, for whom humiliation by stranger was probably a common event, switching off for its duration, almost but never quite numb to the sarcasm pouring from her lips.

I was an adult before mobiles became common but my mother bitched about me to other people, in front of me, in the same selfish cathartic way and I admit that a degree of fellow feeling helps me overlook his use of cannabis. My mother's constant sarcasm cut deep and had a long term, negative impact so I wonder how anyone who does not have enough self confidence to know that they are good at some things could cope under such a negative barrage. Teachers report that very young children now begin school unable to recognise and respond to their own names because their carers rarely speak directly to them except to shout, too busy putting the world to rights on their phones.

To me it is no coincidence that terms such as “bruv” and “bro” are used by young men. When the people that society expects us to respect first and most, our parents, do nothing to deserve it, it is hardly surprising that a peer group or gang becomes the most readily available substitute family. If the dominant woman in your life treats you with contempt whilst behaving in a contemptible manner it is unlikely that you will regard others of her gender as people you want to commit to for life. It becomes inevitable that those who these children choose to prove themselves to are friends who really will follow through, with a beating or even a knife, if they fail to deliver, will teach them shame and pride in a way that their parents never could. It is the closest that many will get to the even handed discipline we all have a right to.

Do not mistake my words for a rant about single mothers because parents become “single“ for all sorts of reasons. An elderly neighbour never tired of telling me of the beloved gentle woman, a war widow, who raised her by herself with very little financial assistance from the government in a way that set a positive pattern for three more generations. The women who typify the modern negative stereotype of the "single mother" are now grandmothers to children who may well turn out just like their parents, raised in the 1980's when conspicuous consumption was a near religion, a measure of self worth.

This is not just about the benefits culture. I point a steady and unforgiving finger at parents who were so keen to achieve their career goals that they replaced love, affection and a guiding hand with all the material goods their earnings could buy. Is it any surprise then, that their children fill the gap left by a lack of nurturing with stuff they don't need when they need stuff they don't want, like education and jobs? To them, greed is still good. As their offspring hurt themselves kicking in shop windows, bleeding on pavements across the UK, the cry went up: “Where are their parents?!” They were watching them in HD, on televisions they may have actually paid for.

Am I the only one to see the irony in the appeal made by David Lammy MP to network providers to shut down the SMS system through which many of these riots seem to have been organised? Thefts were being carried out by those who can afford a Blackberry, using communications that earlier this year were seen as essential to the success of the Arab Spring. To some these looters are revolutionary heroes. The rioters have been characterised as disaffected youths from underprivileged backgrounds but it was predictable that those already convicted include a number who do not lack for money. The emotional famine that their entire peer group, rich and poor, has suffered for a generation or more is only now becoming apparent. Unfortunately the remedy for this sickness is something that money can’t buy.

Thirty minutes

It is hard to believe that this screen of ubiquitous buddleia, scenting the suburban air, hides a railway line that has triggered intense debate, caused thousands of people to protest, and made a minister of state into a figure of hate. It is often referred to as “the Chiltern Line” and if the government has its way it will be the route for HS2, a high speed rail link connecting London to Birmingham and reducing the time of the present journey by about thirty minutes. What could you do with thirty minutes? Start the clock.



Spend your thirty minutes trying to complete a public consultation document, bearing in mind that it has been drawn up by someone who wants you to fall into a trap, to make you say that you actually do want a train charging past your home at over 200 miles an hour, that you have no objection to years of construction work, that you believe every word they say about noise levels. You left school to get away from this kind of thing and here you are taking an exam to stop your home becoming worthless, to justify the years, decades of work you put into paying a mortgage. You take advice, watch videos, listen to the experts before you answer “no” to everything, in a desperate attempt to save all that effort and sacrifice.


Think of all those minutes and half hours spent in a job you hate, gritting your teeth to get through one more day, hour, minute without flinging your letter of resignation at the boss, all for nothing because you are a nimby, small fry, nothing to a man whose salary you pay but didn’t vote for. Another nameless face in the crowd at a demo, along with all the other unwanted little people who have cluttered up his day, getting in the way of “progress”.

You will never be one of those gaining that extra half hour on a train moving so fast that the rest of mankind becomes a blur. You will never afford those plush seats and wonderful service. You will wait with all the rest on a station platform waiting for a worn out train that has been held up, again. Because there is no money to improve what already exists, what you can afford. You will sit in your car, on a bus, in a jam caused by the years of construction work that you are paying for to build a railway line you don’t want, can’t afford, don’t need. You will grind your teeth and curse those who inflicted this upon you and your lowly kind and know that you are helpless. You don’t count, your kind never have.


Thirty minutes in a bluebell wood, deafened by birdsong yet wishing you could make less noise as you walk amongst trees that were old when you were a child. A thousand cobwebs and caterpillar threads cling to your arms as they must have done to those of your ancestors when places like this were vast and untouched. You are the first to walk here today, in a place that has never changed and you thought never would until the minister expressed his opinion. Knowing that you are barely a heart beat in the time it took to make this place that cannot be replaced, replicated, remade. Thirty minutes, a pin prick in time in this woodland set like sapphires and emeralds amongst the coral of suburban rooftops, one last place to remember what it must have been like in this land before “progress” came and ate away at your soul. Time counts for nothing here.


Half an hour at an estate agent’s office, listening to all the advice he can give you on how to sell a worthless house. Paint the walls a neutral colour, thank God you redecorated some of it last year, it will take less money, less time. You’ll get the downstairs lav done in thirty minutes. Put the “For Sale” sign up and hope to hell that the neighbours don’t put one of those bloody posters in the window, hope that whoever takes the bait doesn’t check up on what that means. Keep your fingers crossed for a lot longer than thirty minutes, through every rare viewing, trying not to wince when “it” gets mentioned until you realise that they were just curious, not serious, bad luck. Wish that the things that once made your home such a bargain (“Five minutes walk from the nearest station!”) weren’t the things that make it so undesirable now.

The worst half hour is the one spent listening to your tearful elderly neighbour, born in her house, the one she hoped to die in. Listening to the despair of a woman who cannot fill in a form at the best of times and is rendered incoherent at the thought that her childhood home might be demolished, just another of the worthless small fry who will be swept away for the greater good. She loves her garden but even that has made her a target for the mockery of businessmen. She doesn’t own a bowler hat and her lawn is tiny, a postage stamp of green, but she knows each lily and rose, remembers the ones her mother planted and loves them still. It has taken many a half hour to make this patch of heaven and it was worth every moment.


Wonder, sometimes, how long it would take, how many pills, how much booze, to take the problem away forever. How many of those affected regularly spend thirty minutes that close to edge, when the worry becomes too much - “Why are you crying Mummy?” - when there is no fight left and despair takes over. When you begin to think that all the effort is pointless, that all those half hours have been wasted and you are worn away to nothing, for nothing. Knowing that, when the dust that can never settle makes its way, every day, into your home, your precious half hour will be frittered away by a business man, distracted by the many pleasures in that brand new temple to retail - the station - rushing off half an hour late in a wasteful carbon heavy cab to the appointment he might have made, had he been more mindful of those thirty minutes.

Stop HS2 - advice on completing the consultation document
Stop HS2 natonal petition

A greener shade of blues

A twenty minute walk from my house brings me to a supermarket, once the Granada Cinema, where The Rolling Stones played a gig in 1965. Fifteen minutes away in the opposite direction is an apartment block, the site of the Oldfield Tavern where in 1962 a drummer called Keith Moon auditioned for a band called The Who. They played gigs there throughout 1963 at the Music Club which also hosted Screaming Lord Sutch and many others. It is easy to imagine these young men travelling through the green and pleasant suburb of Ealing, ready to set the world on fire with their sound. With such an impressive musical history it is hardly surprising that Ealing holds an annual festival and this year I made the effort to attend the blues event held in Walpole Park.

At £4 for a day’s entry it is extraordinarily good value. The event is held in what used to be Sir John Soane’s back garden, just off a high street lined with the usual stores. The sun shone on this particular day, but had it proved wet and muddy, the day-glo wristband I was issued with would have allowed me to nip out to Marks and Spencers for some clean clothes or into Pitshanger Manor to dry out. In some ways this is part of the problem with this event and I’m afraid I did have a problem with it.

As at any other music festival there were the usual stalls flogging dream catchers and ethnic clothing but while I was there hardly anyone was buying because the age group for that kind of thing was barely in evidence. In fact the image I took away with me was of the many foldaway chairs that almost filled the main tent. I’ve seen these things advertised in the Observer colour supplement but until now I didn’t know that anyone actually bought them. They even outnumbered the pushchairs, and there were a lot of those.

Once parked in these things their owners just seemed to sit there, a few feet away from bands that were giving it their all. Occasionally someone would head to or from the bar with a beer which they would then place in the specially designed drink holder on the arm rest. They actually used it. How uncool. I found it hard to determine whether any of them were having a good time. I could have got it wrong. Perhaps these were the same people who sat listening reverently to singers in clubs in the sixties and they are still doing it fifty years later. On the other hand it might be that the worthy citizens of the borough were just making sure they got their money’s worth from a council subsidised event. Enjoyment didn’t appear to come into it.

On the smaller South Stage Sam Kelly’s Station House revue featured singer Debbie Giles, TJ Johnson and local guitar player Lally. A group of accomplished musicians who clearly love performing together, they sounded really tight and even though there were some foldaway chairs in evidence their occupants managed to behave as though they still had a pulse. The band were enjoying themselves and had nothing to prove.

Sandi Thom was promoting her new blues influenced album, “Merchants and Thieves”, on the main stage. Perhaps 3pm was just too early a slot but it was a shame that a talented and fresh blues voice was exposed to such a dozy audience (the obligatory dancing drunks didn‘t count). It wasn’t helped by the number of photographers, amateur or otherwise, who began to pop up during her set, to the point where a security guard intervened. This drew the wrath of one man who deliberately encouraged two small boys to dart about right in front of the stage with cameras for the rest of the performance, distracting to everyone and unbelievably rude. I was standing well away from the stage but put my own camera away out of embarrassment.

A great singer, I think Sandi deserved a better reception and I hope that if she returns to Ealing she and her excellent band will be treated with more respect. Another Scot with a particular affinity for the blues, she has embraced them and made them her own. I loved the fact that someone who has had a single at number one in seven countries was still prepared to sell t-shirts and CDs herself and sign them afterwards. She even unwrapped mine for me when I just stood there, star struck! This seemed to be the only opportunity to buy music at the event and although I realise that the download is now king, it seemed strange that this should be the case along with a lack of t-shirts, a staple of every other gig I’ve been to.
　 Music fans struggle to pay for and attend gigs in muddy fields in the middle of nowhere but this conveniently situated one is so cheap and safe that it might as well be a funfair. The local council supports it because it brings more money to the area, generating another layer of income. My impression of Ealing’s annual blues festival is that is a place where people come to socialise rather than celebrate a musical genre that grew from the pared down wisdom, wit and humour of impoverished African Americans, expressed in the most beautiful soul searing way. At this event the music is almost incidental. I went home while it was still light. If I had paid more perhaps I would have stayed all evening to get my money’s worth.

The Stones fell in love with music which evolved in prisons, farms and shacks, far from the comfortable suburbia they grew up in, and had respect for those who made it. I wish Ealing was a magnet for young guitar based musicians and genuine fans, an up and coming generation to ward off the onslaught of over commercialised plastic pop but I’m not sure that you can recreate New Orleans in London without making the area a place where they can flourish and perform with fewer restrictions. The Stones and The Who came about because there used to be so many pubs, clubs and other small venues where they could perform and find each other. You seem to need expensive licenses for everything now.

I have a great deal of respect for the organisers behind the event because they do actively promote Ealing’s blues heritage. My criticism is not aimed at them. I feel very strongly that it requires the intervention of a younger generation that genuinely loves that music, sees what Jagger saw in it and actually performs it. Council grants and worthy people who use the drinks holders on their foldaway chairs are no substitute for a respectful and truly appreciative audience.

The D word

I have no idea why I do it. There is no explanation for the fact that I’ve ended up with these things. Some time ago I spotted a book about the late Princess of Wales in a charity shop and bought it. Since then I’ve bought a few more, along with a couple of thimbles on Ebay though I think the thimbles had more to do with their kitsch appeal than sympathy. For some reason I have taken more interest in Diana since her death than I did when she was alive.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the books that were produced about her in the 1980’s have begun to crop up for sale amongst the bric-a-brac, possibly because someone has moved and decided to let go of a collection or because there has been a death. It is likely to be the latter because so many of her fans were loyal to the last.

Looking through those books it is impossible not to feel sad that the behaviour most of us took to be a coy shyness was in truth indicative of a fear and nervousness we could not have begun to imagine. How mean some of the comments made about her then seem now, with the benefit of hindsight. I can’t help wondering how she felt, at an age where young women are particularly self conscious about their appearance, to have all that aimed at her when she was coming to terms with such a strange new life. Regarded as one of the most elegant women of 1981 she was then voted one of The Ten Worst Dressed of 1982.

From what she said to those who recorded her thoughts, she could never really understand why she had such a potent effect on some of the men around her. I saw this for myself when a teacher at the school I attended at the time came back from a lunch break having seen her. The tough, blunt Scot was useless for the rest of the day because she had smiled at him.

Of course her daughter-in-law to be, the girl she never had the chance to meet, has all that ahead of her and the strange thing is that there has a been a lapse of time large enough for many to forget that the same things are being said all over again. That Kate is a style icon, that she is bound to encourage new interest in the British fashion industry, that she will set trends rather than follow them.

“It was really on the day that she became engaged to the Prince of Wales that she became a leader of fashion. Copies of the magnificent sapphire and diamond engagement ring were very soon on sale for anything from a few pounds to a few thousand pounds, depending on whether they were made of coloured glass or the real thing. Of course the soft blue suit, which became the perfect foil for the engagement ring, was copied everywhere too, and the colour of the season became ‘Lady Diana Blue.‘” “Princess, Leader of Fashion“, Martina Shaw

A few weeks ago I was walking behind someone who looked so much like Kate because of her clothes and hair, and I realise now that what she has in common with Diana is her ordinariness. Diana set a trend for pie crust blouses and that bobbed hairstyle because the media transmitted her look (worn by hundreds of women in central London) to thousands elsewhere. The woman I was following by chance wore her hair long, her raincoat belted in at the waist and her long boots kitten heeled because so many others of her generation do. And now even more do simply because she does.

How easily the lessons of Diana’s trials at the hands of the media have been forgotten. Kate and her family have already suffered the ignominy of being scrutinised and then criticised when her relationship with William broke down briefly. The footage of her walking quickly through a horde of photographers in the early days, head down and hunted, brought back many queasy memories of Diana and her ordeal, both before and after her marriage.

Few are willing to say it out loud, that Kate will inevitably be seen through the filter that her mother-in-law’s experience created. Every British royal bride will be for the foreseeable future. Diana has slept on her island at Althorp for over a decade now and she isn’t coming back but her influence is as powerful as if she had risen from the dead. The special but intangible wedding gift she has given both her boys is contact and experience of the real world. Their experience of normality may still be a long way off from that of the man who waves at them as they drive past today but they are so much closer to it than their father and his siblings ever were.

I hope that this gift will give the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton a fighting chance. I wish them a long, happy and drama free life, full of all the things that a certain blonde, whose memorabilia I will probably continue to accumulate, was denied.

Royal Wedding Charity Fund
Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund

Made in China 2: Something to remind you

Just in case you’ve been on Mars, two major events are on the horizon that will be especially significant for Londoners.

The first is a royal wedding, an occasion when at least two of those involved will probably wish they could just get on with it without all the attention. The second is the 2012 Olympics, an occasion where all of those concerned hope for lots of the right kind of attention (a sports festival free of corruption/scandal/performance enhancing drugs - don‘t hold your breath).

What they have in common is that they will provide opportunities for a great many people to make an awful lot of money, in some cases by selling something truly awful.

Having perused gift stalls in the stifling heat myself, I can understand why someone saw a certain item and thought of me. They were thirsty, their feet hurt and they felt they had to get me something. Besides, everything looks terrific in strong sunlight. Bad taste isn‘t really why I‘m raising this issue, if someone cares enough to buy me a gift on their holiday I should be grateful for it. What winds me up is how often I turn these things over and see the words “Made in China” on the back.

One of the ugliest gifts to grace our home was a nightlight holder from Lanzarote, nasty to handle and impossible to clean because it was so rough, a humorous reminder of the black volcanic landscape of the island. It was horrible but at least it had the virtue of being made in the place that it represented! Its maker is holding their own against an onslaught of foreign made souvenirs.

If, as I do, you live near a big city that attracts tourists, take a look at what’s on sale to those who spend their hard earned money in your country. Take a long hard look at the things that some retailers have chosen to represent you, your culture, your home. Remember, they’ll see them and they’ll think of you.

Walking past a shop in a local station overflowing with items aimed at visitors, I’ve always wondered where the small plastic Union flag purses were made. So in the interests of research I bought one and found that it was, of course, made in China.

I doubt if those buying these purses really give a damn where they were made, they probably just want something cheap, but I’m beginning to wish that they did. “Souvenir” is a French word meaning “to remember”. If the people who buy these things want something to remind them of the time they spent in the UK I would rather it was actually made here and reflected the good design we are capable of, however cheap the item.

Those plastic purses are made by a British company and according to their website they design what they sell. At one time they also made their products in the UK. All sorts of reasons get cited for the transfer of production abroad by companies like this. Top of the list is that it is often cheaper to manufacture goods outside the UK. Lower costs, fewer regulations, quicker production and supply of short runs all figure in the reasoning behind a move abroad. It makes for a wider profit margin and you could argue that, as the company is based in the UK, it’s a good thing because the profits stay here. However, lower costs means lower wages. Fewer regulations can mean poor working conditions and little or no trade union representation. Speedy supply and short runs? Pressure to work long hours in a job with little security. It also means jobs lost or never even created in the country that these souvenirs are supposed to be a reminder of.


The company responsible for the purse has also created a royal wedding range and I would be surprised if any of it has been made in the UK. They’ve used licensed photographs of the couple on their plates, mugs and magnets which means they’ve had to pay to do so. Another company has avoided this by producing a range called “Royal Wedding” which makes no specific reference to them. You’ll find it in branches of a large supermarket chain, everything from paper napkins to a replica of that sapphire engagement ring. It appears again, in miniature, as a pair of earrings, made in China. The official royal wedding range sold through the Buckingham Palace shop, is made in Stoke-on-Trent, where ceramic goods have been produced for centuries and the profits will go towards preserving the extensive Royal Collection.

I find the failure to provide British made souvenirs for a truly British event like the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton particularly frustrating because I keep being told that the UK will benefit from both it and the Olympics. It’s hard to see how we can if there are factories in China just waiting for the news of a royal engagement and capable of turning out thousands of items within days.

The Olympics should be an opportunity for the creative as well as the sporting community of a host country to profit but it seems to me that the benefits and rights of the occasion are shared out amongst corporations long before the circus hits town. The contract to supply enamel pin badges, one of the most lucrative elements of the souvenir industry for the London 2012 Olympics, was awarded to a Chinese company. Many of the twenty-six companies it beat off to win the contract were British - where did they go wrong? I contacted one company that sells enamel badges and according to the person I spoke to there is only one small business still making them in this country. The reasons they aren’t using that manufacturer? Cost and lead time. The profit made on these things is so big that even notching up thousands of air miles by flying them to the UK is no big deal.


It is the small, almost disposable items like badges that bring in the cash, the things that almost everyone can afford. Ask the person managing the shop at any stately home in the UK what the best sellers are and I guarantee that the answer will be erasers, pencils and postcards, because they regularly welcome parties of school children with pocket money budgets. It would be fantastic if all those small basic souvenirs could be made in the UK. A company called Pageantry Postcards is making the effort to produce its goods here and they are typical of the sort of company we should all be supporting. Another, at the more expensive end of the scale, is Colonial Soldier which sells hand carved figures of British soldiers alongside antiques.

I find it extraordinary that a country with such a great reputation for studio pottery does little to promote it to tourists visiting the UK and to organisations such as the London Olympics Organising Committee. Use of the Olympic brand is so tightly regulated that it is unlikely that a local potter could get away with knocking out a few mugs with “Olympics 2012” painted on them. In fact he or she wouldn’t even be allowed to paint on the words “London 2012” without the written consent of LOCOG.

In my opinion it is only legislation and official promotion which will help local artists to genuinely benefit from big events. Discussion and awareness of the issue by local legislators is long overdue. In some cases it is takes simple embarrassment to effect a change but what will it take to embarrass our politicians into changing this?

Think about what you spend your money on when you next take a holiday or mark an occasion. It isn’t just about job creation and national pride. Concerns about human and animal rights should make everyone think twice about what they take home with them. Personally I don’t want to look at something in my home and know that the person who made it is denied rights that I take for granted, nor do I want visitors to my country to believe that I’m happy that British souvenirs are made somewhere like that. It’s nothing to be proud of. There are so many gifted craftspeople and artists out there - make the effort to look for them. They might not be plastering what they make with the local flag but what they create can be just as effective a reminder of a good time.

Guggenheim Museum petition for Ai Weiwei, collaborative artist, Bird’s Nest stadium, Beijing
Olympics 2008

Make a donation to Kate and William’s favoured charities

Stand up and be counted

I’ve got to admit that it took me several days to send off the census form. For some reason I put off filling in or even looking through it, in spite of all the television and newspaper ads encouraging me to get on with it.

This is our third census at our present address. It’s one of those things that mark you out as an established couple, like replacing a saucepan or a washing machine that you bought when you first moved in together. It occurred to me that our former neighbours must have filled out at least five during the time they lived next door and that it will be the last one that another neighbour will complete as a resident of our street before she moves.

Establishing where we all are every ten years, the census of the UK’s population asks questions about employment (or unemployment), religion (a voluntary question) and the kind of home you live in, amongst many other things. Genealogists love them. Now that many are online you can find out within minutes what your great-great grandparents were up to in, for example, 1871. A tantalising absence from a census could be explained by a contemporary event such as a war. A child born a few months before one census may have died by the next one, a great aunt or uncle representing a potential branch of your family tree.

Unfortunately for those keen to know what more recent generations have been up to, the information collected by the census remains secret for a century. This rule only became a legal requirement in 1920, allowing the records for 1911 to be released three years early. Women had begun to demand the right to vote and some boycotted the census taken that year as a protest. One suffragette wrote “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper.” This comment, her personal direct action, remained a secret for almost a hundred years.

The question “Do you stay at another address for more than 30 days a year?“ tells of university for one young adult or military service for another. There must have been many households in the UK for whom the absence of one name at their address brought a sense of pride and happiness because their child had succeeded in gaining a place on a course. For others it meant pride and sadness at the loss of a family member in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The questions being asked are as good an indicator of cultural, economic and political changes as the information they bring in. I wonder what my ancestors would have made of questions about same-sex civil partnerships? The 2011 census allows for the fact that these relatively new official forms of relationship may have broken down already (“Separated but still legally in a same-sex civil partnership”; “Formerly in a same-sex civil partnership which is now dissolved”).

A great uncle of mine earned some extra cash while a student by gathering information for the 1921 census and came across a situation that revealed how some people dealt with failed marriages at the time. Calling at one house he asked for Mrs. X to which the reply was “Which One?” The head of the household was living at the same address as his wife and his new partner along with all their children. Both women referred to themselves as “Mrs. X“ to maintain a veneer of propriety at a time when it was not easy for the average person to obtain a divorce. The Divorce Act of 1969 came into force in 1971 so it may have been another ten years before the impact of the new legislation was evident in a census.

The questions that I found most difficult to answer were the one about qualifications (really confusing - I’m still not sure I picked the right option) and the one about the ethnic group I think I belong to. I wonder how many others from a partly foreign background struggle to answer that sort of question as I do. The promotion around this year’s census has emphasised its value to individuals, that it represents around £22,000 in spending. The government is trying to persuade those reluctant to complete it that it will ensure the right level of services in each area. One question asked if I help or support a neighbour or family member with age or health related needs. Another asked how I travel to work.

They seem to want to know so much and that may be what put me off getting stuck in. For the first time I found it rather intrusive. In the end it turned out that only a small part of the booklet required completion because it allowed for a household of more than two people. I got off quite lightly but I feel for anyone organising a sleepover on the same night.

“H4: Apart from everyone counted in question H2, who else is staying overnight here on Sunday 27 March? These people are counted as visitors. Remember to include children and babies.”

Some unexpected extras for the census officials.

Cherry blossom days

In the days following the momentous events in Egypt earlier this year I heard a brief exchange between a woman and a young man. She had not been able to hear what he had called out to her across the road.

“Sorry?”
“I said, I like you better without the hat!”
“Oh. Right.”

I told her I thought it was a compliment and would have forgotten it if it were not for the fact that she was a sturdy, no nonsense British police woman and he may well have been Egyptian . For a moment, thousands of miles away from Tahrir Square, the uniform that she wore represented so much more than it did to the average Brit. In Egypt the police had been obliged to withdraw from the streets, hiding away from an enraged population who had finally had enough of their corruption and cruelty.

As I grew up in London it was impossible to ignore the many refugees who regarded it as a place of safety. They brought with them their food and customs, for the most part keeping them behind their front doors unless a bond was formed with neighbours or business contacts. Most of the time they did not confide their reasons for fleeing their countries. When they did, it was often a shock to those who had grown up in a free and democratic society, even hard to believe.

Hardest of all to hear was the news that someone my family had come to like had died a prolonged and dreadful death at the hands of people who had lured him back to his former home. We came to understand why the children next door would not drink perfectly safe tap water. A childhood in Beirut meant a mistrust of any that did not come from a bottle as you never knew whether damage to pipes had led to contamination. I watched their mother pull handfuls of crumpled £20 pound notes from the pocket of her fur coat in Harrods toy department to pay for anything that would take away her little girl‘s memory of being kidnapped. Her au pair wept as she watched Sadat and Begin make peace on our television in 1977.

When I moved to the suburbs I found that I had not left these sad, sometimes terrifying tales behind me. There are pockets of the rest of the world all over the outskirts of every British city. From the restaurants and cafes where proprietors wait for the lunch time rush to the empty offices where cleaners spend their evenings, there is always someone who remembers long ago and far away, a time when things were better. Last night the scent of hyacinths wafted towards me which, at this time of year, speaks to me of Iran and exile.

Some of the best stories come from minicab drivers. I used to hear a lot about the former life of a young Sri Lankan, a former policeman who had been obliged to leave his wife and child behind when he fled from death threats. He pulled over to show me the scar on his leg, sustained in an accident, and gave a graphic account of what it is like to be in a car while being attacked by an elephant. He was waiting for his family to join him but I have not seen him since before the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

In the suburbs we have the pleasure of seeing blossom at this time of year as the trees whose ancestors were brought back from the East give us a brief but lovely show. In Japan there would have been picnics under the trees as they came into bloom, spreading from the south in a wave of creamy pink. This year the picnics and celebration of Spring have been forgotten as the country comes to terms with the aftermath of the latest tsunami.

Here, anyone who looks even slightly Japanese is avoiding eye contact in case someone mistakes their nationality and expresses their sadness. It is hard to know what to say when I do encounter someone who is actually from Japan. The enormity of what has happened is hard to take in. In a matter of days all those petals will fall and clog up the ventilators in cars parked along the street and create sticky drifts in the gutter. There is nothing to make me think that those trees will not blossom again next Spring but for many people thousands of miles away it must feel as though the world has come to an end.

British Red Cross appeal for Japan
Shelterbox
Save the Children