Saturday February 15th 2020. Tim and Beryl Hall’s bungalow in Bracknell, Berkshire. Their son Rob arrives on one of his fairly regular visits, having travelled by train from Reading. He works shifts now, four ten-hour days followed by two days off. The idea is to cut commuting journeys, which was happening anyway because of the expense of all forms of powered transport, especially the car. People aren’t so bothered nowadays about finding the ‘right’ job, but any job near heir home. Rob retrained in horticulture when the construction company he worked for went bust in 2013, and he grows fruit, vegetables and nuts for one of Reading’s rising number of urban food co-operatives. His job has its stresses: crop thefts, hungry insects and small mammals like rabbits, drought and flash floods, and uncertain pollination by bees whose colonies have been unstable for well over a decade.

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The Mail, Saturday February 15th 2020. ‘Workfare for care home residents’ by Christabel Flint.

Maisie Duff, 85, is a great-grandmother, has two artificial hips and is partially sighted. She is one of 65 residents in the Victoria Place Care Home at Brackside in Berkshire, and has been told she will have to work two days a week if she wants to remain in the home. Her only son David, 52, said: “It’s a disgrace. She’s got no money left, and social services won’t pay the fees the care home owners charge.” (more…)

A letter to Janie Hall from her friend Sharon Gates.

February 10th 2020

Here’s a present, Janie, to wish you a happy 48th birthday — it’s a clockwork DVD player. Be electricity independent!! There’s a second one for Emily to take on her travels, she’s off soon, isn’t she? How are you all doing in Reading? How are you coping with the floods? Here in what was so quaintly named the ‘Thames Gateway’ we have some redeveloped areas that are floating islands, able to rise and fall with the waters, but most people are still on ‘dry’ land which as you know is often inundated. I hadn’t paid much attention to it until recently, but think about water supplies and drains – traditional water pipes and sewers do not fit the bill when homes vary in height by up to two metres. The transport systems have to be different, too. There’s a new network of amphibious buses able to travel on land or water, but that’s not too much help when your local bus stop is deeply flooded. The water makes lots of parents afraid, so I think the new law making swimming compulsory for all babies is basically a good idea, although the water is often so dirty that no one in their right mind would want to swim in it. (more…)

Gatwick Airport, a wet Thursday in late November, 2010.
Tim and Beryl Hall are shuffling towards Security, an hour and a half after arriving by coach, and an hour and a half before their flight to Malaga, on the Costa del Sol.

Tim: “Look Beryl what’s that commotion ahead?”
Beryl: “Heavens, police are trying to arrest a woman, she’s wearing a long grey raincoat.”
Tim: “I hope she’s not a suicide bomber.”
Beryl: “They’re leading her away, maybe she was trying to jump bail or something.”
Tim: “You’re never sure now are you, whether people who are arrested are really criminals, or just unlucky, or disliked by people in High Places, or have just made a mistake like filling in a form wrongly, or not filling in a form. Well it’s not us anyway.”
Beryl: “Pick up your bag, the queue’s moving again.”

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Lizzie used to be Janie’s cleaner, but Janie couldn’t afford to pay her any more.

Lizzie lives in a rented ‘park home’ – a fairly posh cross between a caravan and a prefab – with her eight-year-old daughter Megan, whose dad disappeared from the scene before she was two. Cleaning jobs used to be easy to find, and Lizzie would bring in £200 a week for 20 hours, enough to get by. Now clients are few and scattered over a five-mile radius. Lizzie travels by bike, sweeps, polishes, washes and irons, and has advertising cards in the windows of newsagents in the better-heeled parts of Reading. (more…)