High-class shopping

I bought an excellent pair of shoes in Nottingham yesterday. It cost me £5. The shoes were last year's style and shop-soiled and I found them on a market stall, tucked away in a side street opposite the glossy and uncomfortable Victoria Centre. I couldn't face the Victoria Centre. It has a lively market area, which I love - you can get the best espresso coffee in Nottingham at a small Italian stall - but the main shopping centre, with its mirrored columns, lifts and escalators, disorients me.

I dislike shopping but sometimes the liveliness of Nottingham draws me. I like its atmosphere and variety. I enjoy seeing the Goths and political campaigners mingling by the steps of the Council House. I like the buskers and still miss the much-loved Xylophone Man. And while too many of the surviving shops are national chains, with windows arranged according to order from Head Office, the mobile stalls have been decorated with character and are set up with individual care. Much of the character of Nottingham as a shopping centre comes from these street traders.

Apparently the councillors disagree. They don't like the stalls where customers can buy a hat, an apple, a bunch of flowers or a hot baked potato - and propose to put all the stalls together, out of the way of city centre shoppers. They say the stall detracts from Nottingham as a place for "high-class shopping".

Obviously I'm not a high-class shopper. I looked at the stalls as I wandered round. Behind the Victorian Oven, which has been selling baked potatoes to the people of Nottingham for 24 years, there's a mobile phone shop, a branch of Ann Summers and a big Primark. Not what I thought of as "high class" but the councillors seem to have a different idea. The fruit stall and flower stall masked a large, empty - but very "high-class" - shop. They caught the sun and were so colourful that I wandered past them down Bridlesmith Gate instead of crossing the Old Market Square.

The street traders, who support families through their established businesses, are shocked at the Council's threat to turf them out of work in an economic crisis. Yesterday regular customers were queuing to sign a petition to keep the stalls. There's outrage in the local newspaper. I'm outraged too. What affluent, high-class shoppers does the Council want to attract? Bankers, perhaps.

I'm not a high-class shopper. Perhaps the Council will follow this absurdity by establishing a dress code and stationing bouncers at all entrances to Nottingham City Centre. Plainly people like me aren't welcome there.

Hope

I remember the opening of Roehampton Library. The class above me at primary school went to watch when Noel Streatfield declared the library open. I was so jealous. Surely none of them loved books as I did? Surely none of them had worked their way through all the library copies of Noel Streatfield in Putney Library, a bus ride away. After missing the library opening I wrote to Noel Streatfield and she wrote back - a lovely letter that I treasured for years.

Libraries mattered to me even more then than they do now. Libraries were so many things: they held information and imaginative possibilities; they were warm and friendly; they were staffed by librarians who could recommend books I'd never heard of; they had desks, tables and, in Roehampton, sofas on which I could lounge at full-length, exploring book after book.

Libraries mattered most when I was poor. In Bidford-on-Avon the library was a van which arrived once a week for two hours. It wobbled when I climbed up the stairs to enter it. There were no desks or sofas and very little space. Choice of books was limited: there were never more than three in the poetry section (one was always about Shakespeare) but they changed from time to time. I still lurked there, carrying my small baby daughter in a harness that made it impossible for me to browse the lower shelves. Books were more than life - they were the possibility that things could be different. The world of the imagination is also a place of hope.

In times of crisis and falling incomes local governments focus on what they see as their core tasks: rubbish collection, streets, schools and all the services that councils are required by central government to provide. Libraries - and museums, art galleries, leisure centres, theatres - are facing cuts and closures. But hope too is a necessity. Taking these things away damages the poor more than the rich. It's like putting a lever in the gulf between rich and poor and forcing it to ten times its width.

In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Frank Owen, the main character, says: “What I call poverty is when people are not able to secure for themselves all the benefits of civilisation; the necessaries, comforts, pleasures and refinements of life, leisure, books, theatres, pictures, music, holidays, travel, good and beautiful homes, good clothes, good and pleasant food.”

When councils close libraries they deprive the poor of one of the benefits of civilization. They close off imaginative possibilities and stunt lives. If the council burnt books there would be a protest. But books are killed just as surely if they're thrown into landfill, pulped to make motorways, or locked away unread.

"Saint Valentine is past"

Valentine's Day was particularly insistent this year. I suppose it was the desperation of shops, restaurants, etc., who wanted a big marketing opportunity before Easter. A day later, the Valentine displays are still in the windows with racks of cards, gifts and ribbons unsold. It will be hard to persuade anyone to buy scarlet hearts and flowers for Easter.

Half of me likes St Valentine's Day, which has been celebrated in England at least since Chaucer's time. Shakespeare mentions it at least twice and there's a reference in Pepys' diary. It seems to have been a day for courtship and games. Later, Charles Lamb recorded the popularity of anonymous Valentine's cards. But today, with advertisements screaming their wares, it can seem slightly shameful to spend the day alone. Nowadays, Valentine's Day is for couples to parade their love before the world. I was touched and amused by awkwards young men unsure how to carry flowers but also annoyed that so many events advertised themselves for couples only.

An email list offered me an alternative diversion. I've a weakness for villanelles and sestinas so, when I was invited to attend the launch of a poetry book, I accepted, especially as the venue was a short cycle-ride away. The book, Desperanto, comes from the small Smokestack Press and the launch was a pleasant, hospitable occasion with a good audience, free wine or fruit juice and clear, enthusiastic readings by the poet, Mike Wilson. The poems were witty and played games with words and letters while remaining serious. I'd meant it as a free afternoon out but of course I had to buy the book - I can't resist that kind of wordplay. And it was such a rest from hearts and flowers.

I came out of the library and walked down the High Street. The vendors were struck with desperation, calling to potential customers. The price for a bouquet of a dozen red roses had fallen from £5 to £3. I clutched my new book and hurried past.

Friday the thirteenth

Going to Nottingham has become a kind of memory test: which shop was where? I play a gloomy game of prediction too: which will be the next shop to fail? There are plenty of shops still standing but they're emptier than they were and even in Primark people browse and deliberate over the quality of goods.

I was headed to a bookshop to collect a book for a friend but browsed a little on my way. I didn't buy anything though later I had a half of Marston's Pedigree (50p) and a freshly-baked pretzel (75p) to supplement the apple I had brought with me. I'm turning into a virtuoso credit-crunch shopper.

I was also in search of happenings. An announcement at fencing alerted me to Light Night and it sounded fun, though the information on the web was hard to follow. There would be lights, sounds and activities - well, you can usually find those in Nottingham on a Friday night. Presumably there would be something extra that I might like seeing - and I could also support friends from my fencing club who were demonstrating epee and sabre on the cold flagstones of the Exchange Arcade.

The evening began slightly before the billed opening at 6.00. as school musicians began to play and the Council House was luminously strange in a sequence of bright and acid colours. I watched the changing lights for a while, then was drawn a little out of the square towards the Brian Clough statue. I don't know what Brian would have made of his pale green, glow-in-the-dark jumper but I suspect he'd have liked the attention he was receiving.

The streets around the Old Market Square were illuminated by tall, slender, pyramidal lanterns. I think they had been decorated in schools and libraries. I walked away from the noise towards Hockley and the Lacemarket. It's a slightly offbeat area and every so often I'm beguiled by something unexpected. On Light Night, it was the hula hoop dancer with glowing hula hoops and the juggler tossing luminous clubs high in the air. They were outside the shop that sells juggling equipment and magic equipment but for all I know they later roamed the streets. Nottingham was a magical, unlikely place where brides on stilts might appear round a corner, a robot danced and sprayed crowds with a water pistol and a blue, lit-up wheelie bin called Sid terrorised pedestrian by ... doing wheelies, of course.

Fencing in the city's poshest shopping centre - below the Council House - made perfect sense on a night like this. Crowds flocked to wonder at the speed and skill on display - and perhaps to fantasise about d'Artagnan or, of course, Robin Hood. People asked the usual questions: "are the swords sharp?" and "what are the strongs for?" (the strings were the wires that connected the fencers to the electric score box). I watched for a while, applauding points and inwardly cheering my friends.

Then I began to wander further - to St Mary's in the Lacemarket. I pushed open the door and found the late mediaeval space lit mostly by clustered candles. Their light wavered fragilely amid the deep shadows. There was a fragile music too - chords that filled the air, then faded into silence. And above the altar a black and white film of a smiling boy running on a bridge flickered into life, then died. It took a while for me to realise that the sounds and film were being produced by a typewriter and that visitors to the church were invited to type on it in response to the question, "What gives you hope?" This was the typophonium. Small children and adults queued in wonder. I queued too and noted that the clatter of typewriter keys stopped me from hearing the chords or seeing the film.

Eventually I headed back towards the train station but paused at the Congregational Hall where there was a music and film installation by Streetwise Opera and Mira Calix. My Secret Heart was projected on a huge oval at the centre of the church. I watched and wondered for a while. I knew the work was based on Allegri's Miserere and knew it was strange and beautiful and that was all. As I left, the film was still running.

Many of the wonders I'd seen would scare people if placed in a gallery and labelled "art." But on Light Night people thronged the streets, their minds open to novelty and wonder. There were no worries that reverence was required. Instead we all displayed that capacity to marvel that is regularly evoked at circuses, pantomimes and football matches.

I walked past a street sign promising "Biscuits for 800 metres." There may have been biscuits. I didn't check. By the Broadmarsh Centre, great signs in vacant shops offered "wonderful retail opportunities." But that suggestion required more imagination than I possess. I hurried on past.

Credit-crunch entertainment

We're still calling it "the credit crunch," although other terms have arisen: recession, depression, crisis, disaster. This morning brought a government admission of something most of us must have suspected for some time: that what has happened will be worse than the 1930s and longer lasting in its effects. Time to batten down the hatches, perhaps, and look after ourselves and our families?

While I'm concerned for my family - especially my children and my parents - that deosn't seem much of a solution. Nor can I feel any smug satisfaction in saying, "I was right all along - it's really bad." I may have realised it was bad but I don't know what to do about it. I've a few ideas - not well thought through - so if anyone trusts the public with information and a debate, I'll throw in a few sentences. But, so far as I can see, the government doesn't really trust or like the people. It seems to me that the more people involved in the debate, the more likely we are to curvive and cope. The government tends to treat the people as if they were a large class of obstreperous toddlers, too foolish and unruly to be trusted with the truth and too ignorant to have any useful ideas. Instead the government offers commands backed up by fear of punishment - or something worse.

So I'm living through the credit crunch or depression or recession or crisis or disaster - and trying to make sure that it is life and not mere existence. For me that involves reading books, fencing,listening to music, going to plays and films. Ideally this should involve communicating with other people and sharing experience, whether through discussion of a book or going out to an event. It's not a time for extravagance. I haunt the shops selling second-hand and remaindered books and look out for affordable culture.

On Sunday evening I cycled through the snow to the Paradiso Cinema. It's a new venture - a community cinema which doesn't set up to make a profit. Once a month, in the local secondary-school theatre, a film is shown. £4.50 buys a full-price ticket and there's a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink before the screening. This provides a chance to chat to other cinema-goers, and they seemed a friendly lot, even though there was no-one I knew and I was the only person attending the film alone. (I was the only cyclist too.)

The film was Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky, superficially a cheerful comedy from pre-credit crunch days (it opened last year), The main character, Poppy, as brightly dressed as her name, is relentlessly, infuriatingly cheerful. Occasionally this blossoms into a strength - she is credible as a good, loving primary-school teacher whose pupils flourish under her care. She has courage too, refusing to run away from the distressed and the mentally ill. But she is less happy meeting her sister, who tells her to settle down, grow up and get a mortgage. What she rejects is not this pathetic and limited definition of adulthood but the idea of adult responsibility. Poppy is an everyday Peter Pan who explicitly - at the start of the film - wants nothing to do with reality.

Viewers react to the film in different ways and it's open to opinions and interpretations. I'd have liked the opportunity to discuss it afterwards and hear how other people had responded. But the snow was still falling and everyone was eager to get home. My bike left clean dark tracks in the white of the cycle path as I headed away from the cinema and back to this credit-crunched, disaster-ridden world.

Iceland and the axis of evil

"The half wit does not know that gold
Makes apes of many men:
One is rich, one is poor,
There is no blame in that."

Those words, translated by W.H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, come from 'Hávamál', also known as 'The Words of the High.' The earliest manuscript version comes from around the year 800 but the poem probably pre-dates Christianity in Iceland as the words are ascribed to the god Odin.

I've wanted to visit Iceland for many years - even before I saw pictures its mountains, plains and geysirs. The starting point was Auden and MacNeice's travel book, Letters from Iceland, which combines comedy with an underlying seriousness - Iceland is a place of sanity in a world rapidly going mad.

The Iceland Auden and MacNeice visited was a relatively poor country. Since I've wanted to go there, it has seemed too expensive. Every so often I leaf through a travel brochure or visit tourist websites and then the prices deter me. I don't want a weekend break - I want to see Iceland properly and learn enough of the language to get by, but that's far too expensive.

Britain's relationship with Iceland has been awkward. I remember the antagonisms of the Cod Wars, especially the third Cod War in which Iceland claimed that its unilateral extension to its coastal waters was an attempt to stop overfishing. Iceland may have had a point as the seas have certainly been overfished since then, but Icelanders were portrayed in the press as unpleasant, violent people trying to grab territory from poor British fishermen.

Later the image changed - the Icelanders were cool, sophisticated people wandering through trendy Reykjavik and swimming in the Blue Lagoon. I was never quite convinced by that. I had, at least, glanced at a copy of a novel by Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic people he described didn't seem quite like that.

I hadn't noticed the rise of Icelandic banks. I don't worry too much about where my money is held, so long as the bank operates efficiently. I know I ought to take more trouble about ethical accounts but I've been defeated by the effort entailed in switching to the Co-op, though I do have an ISA with Triodos. The safety of money seems a matter of luck and quite beyond my control - if it vanishes, I'll have to do without it.

The crash in Iceland took me by surprise and the ripples shook me. I hadn't realised Icelandic companies owned so much - or, it turned out, owned less than nothing. The assets seem to be cancelled out by liabilities and the government has stopped trading on the stock exchange and presided over the closure of the banks.

Poor Iceland - it seems that the country is in debt to the rest of the world. That debt amounts to £116,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And Gordon Brown is threatening to sue for British assets.

I don't know how one country sues another. I don't know how Iceland is supposed to pay the rest of the world for the money lost by its banks. I can see that there's an argument about where the money should be, just as there was with Lehman Brothers. Lehman was accused of sending money out of Britain to privilege debtors in the United States - but Lehman is old news now.

I'm slightly shocked to find that the British government is using anti-terrorism legislation against Iceland. At 10.00 this morning, Gordon Brown enacted a Statutory Instrument under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. It was called the Landsbanksi Freezing Order 2001 and it came into force 10 minutes later - one hour and fifty minutes before it was laid before Parliament. The Home Office website is clear on the purposes of the Act. It was introduced to "cut off terrorist funding" and improve security. It was even meant to aid European co-operation. And it was introduced in response to the shock of 9/11, without the detailed debate and analysis that would be usual.


It may be necessary to act quickly on funds. But we were told that this law, like so many others, was introduced to keep us safe from terrorists - to prevent another 9/11. Has Iceland suddenly joined the Axis of Evil?


I find I'm impressed by the behaviour of ordinary Icelanders, as reported on the BBC. And there's something moving about the behaviour of the Icelandic rock star, Bubbi Morthens, who convened and performed at a free concert opposite the parliament building, asking people to stand together. Bubbi Morthens has lost money too. He spoke of a "new reality" and the possibility of a "new dawn". The language is too vague for me to be sure about what he means - there could be implications I've missed. But this does seem a time for people to stand together and face reality - and to think about how society must change. I just hope that what emerges is a more just and kinder society.


Meanwhile, here's Bubbi Morthens performing in Copenhagen (mostly in English) in 2007.

Girl number 20

There's something addictive about watching the little red figures change. Every so often they flicker into green for an hour or so. Sometimes a day ends with the figures locked into green. Then the descent begins again.

The stock markets are so remote from what really matters that it's hard to see the probable effect of the descending numbers. It seems as though the effects will be felt first by the rich and irresponsible. Those who made money gambling on the markets may have to do without new fur coats this year. They may cut their fleet of limousines, sell a country house or travel business class instead of hiring a private jet.

The rest of us have less to lose - but it looks as though what we own may be at risk. Those who obediently followed the advice of the government or experts may suddenly find themselves unable to take money from their bank, without pensions, without insurance - even without their home. In an economy built on debt and luxury services, jobs are beginning to crumble just as prices rise. So much of what we take for granted has been made in sweatshops overseas, at prices we thought we controlled - now it turns out that the market doesn't always run in our favour. The producers are beginning to take control and raising their prices. Soon we'll be looking around for our manufacturing industry and wondering where it went. We may even be asking why the coal mines were closed if we can't afford to import the fuel we need. We'll wonder what happened to the farms.

Or perhaps, suddenly and for no apparent reason, the markets will settle, banks will be able to borrow vast sums of money again - and will urge us to borrow it - and we'll get back to where we were before, thinking that we're rich.

I wander down the High Street wondering how safe the shops are and which will be there next week, let alone next year. A couple of weeks ago I set out with my son to buy him a birthday present at his favourite music shop. The shop had been there for years, staffed by dedicated workers who spent many of their evenings practising, teaching and playing folk music. The shop was a busy wonderland of instruments that careful visitors were allowed to play. I was startled to hear my son trying a harp for the first time and picking out a Christmas carol. There were sitars and Chinese lutes as well as banjos, guitars, violins and a basement given over to wind instruments. My son did work experience there and learnt to re-string his guitar and take a clarinet to pieces for cleaning. Then, suddenly, the shop was gone. Only a few cardboard boxes and a harp stood in the window. There were a few notices but no explanation. I wish I knew where the staff were. I'll never forget the kindness with which they showed my son new chords on the guitar and encouraged his playing.

There are so many small shops, set up by helpful optimists. They were encouraged by a climate which urged people to become entrepreneurs and work for themselves. They invested their life savings and so many hours in a dream - sometimes starting from scratch and sometimes paying for a franchise. But as jobs go and savings lose their value, who can afford beauty treatments, frothy coffee, fancy cakes, crystals, strings of glittering beads? Even food retailers find it hard to compete with supermarkets - and will find it harder to keep going. I fear Tesco has more chance of survival than the local greengrocer. (Our cheese shop, with its splendid array of British cheeses, closed years ago, despite its loyal customers. Apparently not quite enough of us transferred our custom from the big supermarket. I wish I'd known how close the battle was and I'd have encouraged all my friends to shop there.)

Even the big shops are at risk. Many seem to have been owned by Icelandic companies and, as Iceland goes bust, the companies (including Hamleys, Woolworth, Moss Bros and House of Fraser) are being "let go". I wonder who has money - or will risk the debt - to take them over. Perhaps they will be lost like the names of the past: Lilley and Skinner, Mackintosh sweets and all the rest.

For the moment, I'm more or less untouched. So far as I know, I still have money in the bank - and it's a small enough quantity to be, in theory, safeguarded by the government. In theory I can still look forward to a pension. What will really happen, if the crash is very bad, I don't know.

I keep looking back to prosperous times, only a few months ago, and for some reason I keep remember the lesson the children were taught in Charles Dickens' Hard Times which is, among other things, a critique of political economy. Mr M'Choakumchild, the schoolmaster, is trying to teach a class of children what prosperity is. Most of the children learn their lesson but girl number 20, Sissy Jupe fails to get the point. Asked if a country with "fifty millions of money" is a prosperous nation, she can only reply, "I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine." Mr M'Choakumchild persists, urging Sissy to imagine the schoolroom an immense town "and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion?" Sissy responds, "I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million." But that, she is told, is the wrong answer. What matters is the prosperity of the nation as a whole and not who has the money or whether some people starve.

Our prosperous country hasn't just ignored the suffering of the poor in recent years. Mockery of the poor has become widespread while wealth, however acquired, has been a passport to fame and respect. Now it looks as though we're headed into the storm.