Two encounters outside shops
Oct. 10th, 2020 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12We have a scattering of local shops around the corner, and I generally try to do as much grocery shopping as possible in them, usually on a Saturday morning. Given that these shops are all quite small and narrow, they have had strict limits on numbers allowed inside during the pandemic — either two people or one person at a time. What this means, of course, is queues of masked shoppers outside waiting to be allowed in.
Outside the French bakery, I fell to talking to the young guy standing in front, whose ears pricked up at my accent when he recognised a fellow Australian. He was from Sydney, married to a British woman, and had been here for five years. (Whenever I meet a Sydneysider I always tell them I'm from Canberra, because they always want to ask what school you went to if they think you come from Sydney.) Within about a minute the talk had inevitably turned to visas, dealing with the Home Office, and paths to citizenship. It's been four years since I became a citizen, and three years since I had to stop worrying about it on a personal level when Matthias became a citizen, but the whole experience is still so clear in my mind — that sense of having to marshall vast armies of paper and documents to prove the things that others took for granted, that feeling of anxiety that never really left, the need to put your life on hold until the next piece of paper, the next reprieve, and yet mentally counting down the years until you'd have to do it all again. Almost all the time when I meet a fellow migrant, talk turns to visas before too long. If you're not a migrant, and don't have migrants in your family, it's sometimes hard to get a sense of how much this whole business just completely dominates our lives!
Fretful visa talk aside, it was quite nice to chat to another Australian.
The other shop was different. This shop is simultaneously a post office and newsagent, and a convenience store and fancy deli, as well as being one of the few places in town that sells kosher food. It's where you'd go if you want groceries that can't be found in the rather limited tiny Co Op supermarket. Since the pandemic started, they've had a limit on two customers at a time in the store, although because of the way it's laid out, you can't always see how many other people are already inside. This morning, when I arrived, I stuck my head in the door and could see about eight or ten students clustered inside, making no attempt to disance, all queueing up to pay for their respective shopping. I felt awful for the shopkeepers. Because they were each paying for individual items, those who had been served then left the shop and stood in a cluster right next to the door, removing their masks and chatting, and there was no way for me to move away from them as it would have meant I'd lose my spot in the queue. (They were also talking loudly about students in their halls who'd been having unauthorised illicit parties in the shared kitchens, which did nothing to lessen my stress!) I'd been feeling worried enough in the press of crowds in the centre of town, but I'd completely forgotten that in our rather suburban area there is also a scattering of university accommodation — which means students in the local shops. I think I'm going to have to switch to doing my local shopping during the week, in the middle of the day or something.
On its own, such an experience is perhaps insignificant. What worries me is that versions of what I witnessed outside the shop will have been repeated in various ways all around town, and puncture the fragile relative safety we'd managed to maintain for the past seven months.
Outside the French bakery, I fell to talking to the young guy standing in front, whose ears pricked up at my accent when he recognised a fellow Australian. He was from Sydney, married to a British woman, and had been here for five years. (Whenever I meet a Sydneysider I always tell them I'm from Canberra, because they always want to ask what school you went to if they think you come from Sydney.) Within about a minute the talk had inevitably turned to visas, dealing with the Home Office, and paths to citizenship. It's been four years since I became a citizen, and three years since I had to stop worrying about it on a personal level when Matthias became a citizen, but the whole experience is still so clear in my mind — that sense of having to marshall vast armies of paper and documents to prove the things that others took for granted, that feeling of anxiety that never really left, the need to put your life on hold until the next piece of paper, the next reprieve, and yet mentally counting down the years until you'd have to do it all again. Almost all the time when I meet a fellow migrant, talk turns to visas before too long. If you're not a migrant, and don't have migrants in your family, it's sometimes hard to get a sense of how much this whole business just completely dominates our lives!
Fretful visa talk aside, it was quite nice to chat to another Australian.
The other shop was different. This shop is simultaneously a post office and newsagent, and a convenience store and fancy deli, as well as being one of the few places in town that sells kosher food. It's where you'd go if you want groceries that can't be found in the rather limited tiny Co Op supermarket. Since the pandemic started, they've had a limit on two customers at a time in the store, although because of the way it's laid out, you can't always see how many other people are already inside. This morning, when I arrived, I stuck my head in the door and could see about eight or ten students clustered inside, making no attempt to disance, all queueing up to pay for their respective shopping. I felt awful for the shopkeepers. Because they were each paying for individual items, those who had been served then left the shop and stood in a cluster right next to the door, removing their masks and chatting, and there was no way for me to move away from them as it would have meant I'd lose my spot in the queue. (They were also talking loudly about students in their halls who'd been having unauthorised illicit parties in the shared kitchens, which did nothing to lessen my stress!) I'd been feeling worried enough in the press of crowds in the centre of town, but I'd completely forgotten that in our rather suburban area there is also a scattering of university accommodation — which means students in the local shops. I think I'm going to have to switch to doing my local shopping during the week, in the middle of the day or something.
On its own, such an experience is perhaps insignificant. What worries me is that versions of what I witnessed outside the shop will have been repeated in various ways all around town, and puncture the fragile relative safety we'd managed to maintain for the past seven months.
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