Dear John Lewis, Leicester

No apologies but I can't hold back any longer ... I'm missing you John Lewis.  There I said it! Since you closed the shutters over twelve whole weeks ago now, I've been pining for your jaunty kitchen utensil displays, bright and airy sales floors and the massively-out-of-my-price-range rug emporium.  I know it sounds crazy but just touching them is bliss.  Obviously I've been stuck in The Nest too long and I'm going a bit feather-brained but I'm drawn like a moth to the buzzing candle flame of the Tech section and adore the way it morphs into the baby wear department as if they were an odd couple. I've wasted whole afternoons people-watching and writing in the cafe with it's obscured glass surround, presumably deployed to mask the panoramic view over a spectacularly dull car park facade.  Please come back and I promise to social distance daily in the blissful calm of the fabric and knitting area and not breathe on the beautiful shoes.  I'll even smile when being inappropriately greeted four or five times before I've ambled ten feet through the door and submit to interrogation by the iPad Chap stationed at the front door asking about my 'shopping experience' - yes, it's dreadful occasionally - but I'm still missing you.

I ventured into Leicester on Monday before they locked us down again and those shutters of yours remained resolutely shut.  Inside, I felt like Cathy calling to Heathcliff but there'll be no crashing through your doors yet I fear.  Times are hard for all of us but it doesn't take a retail analyst to see the picture for the whole UK is gloomy.  And yes, I do know Leicester is a hard place to make a profit.  My maternal grandmother was from well-heeled Suffolk dynasty who described the people as 'penny-pinching'.  Not true of course, it's high-end-motor and personalised number plate heaven here.
"They would skin a flea for a farthing..." was her favourite phrase but that only means we like a bargain.  Who doesn't?

Remember me?  I was there when you opened the Highcross Bridge for the first time in September 2008, shivering in my Body Shop uniform, earning 90% of national minimum wage with no hope of an annual bonus, and considering that I should have applied to you instead John. And now I'm imploring you to re-open when Boris finally allows us out of lockdown.  With your doors flung wide, we stand a chance of keeping an element of quality in our retail cathedral.  Leicester and the Shire will still be able to buy all those gorgeous things we didn't know we wanted until your store brought them to us.  While I'm wallowing in nostalgia, think fondly on all those grooms who bought wedding suits on the second floor, and mothers-of-the-bride panicking over which outfits and matching shoes would work on the Big Day; where will they go?  Although you could do with a specialist hat section and the underwear's a bit mumsy too, sorry.

It would be awful if Leicester fell from retail grace in the same way Northampton has been wrecked.  There, the closure of M&S and Debenham's has left them with a market and very little else except charity shops, essentially driving paying customers to bland old Milton Keynes.  Even you have to admit that retail has become homogenised lately but you could go on that diet and reinvent yourselves, come back to us as a "John Lewis Lite" in the style of the New Street Station store in Birmingham which has all the brands, just with less confusing mountains of stock.  It would also be lovely to refresh the cosmetics department with a Charlotte Tilbury boutique and a MAC outlet for us more forward-thinking clientele.  Don't throw a bucket of cold water on my ideas just yet.  Better still, put a Waitrose on the ground floor to add spice to the store, then I wouldn't have to drive to Market Harborough (not at the moment obviously) to buy harissa paste and your excellent Essentials brown sauce for Alphonse, who has been complaining bitterly about his lacklustre beans on toast.  You see John, no other sauce will do.

If you're in any way unsure that I mean all of the above, just take a look at your own Christmas advert for 2019.  Edgar is a small, misunderstood dragon with a huge need to be loved and accepted by the people around him - well I think that's what it was about - and Dan Smith of Bastille singing the evocative words of REO Speed Wagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" brought tears to my eyes.  I can't fight it John ... I want you to stay with Leicester and fight too, and we will come back with a flaming Christmas pudding for the end of 2020.

With Love

Tip of the Beak:  I've never written a 'Dear John' letter, fax or text before because I've never dated a 'John'.  But I'm moved to write this one before I'm left bereft by the sight of our sad and still closed John Lewis store.  Yes, the City of Leicester has scored another spectacular own goal with a spike in our Covid-19 figures but it doesn't mean we're bad people.  It means that no-one will visit our fair city without wearing a mask, apron and gloves for a while longer.  Just a word to the wise post-coronavirus, I wouldn't come without booking a parking space outside of your own house and carrying some extra toilet rolls either.  We can't leave temporarily but just in case you're unsure of where we are, here's a helpful map.



Stay safe

Raven

Lockdown Fever

It's been a while hasn't it?  I had no real reason to stop sharing tall tales from The Nest except I'd run out of cheery struggles to write about, especially as I don't work in retail any more and for the past year I'd relaxed into a state of mental torpor about the work situation reasoning that 'it's not long until retirement.'  Except all those plans have been dumped in the face of a global pandemic and since March 2020 I've learned to love queuing for food just as they did in the old Soviet Union.  Yesterday, I queued for half an hour in the midday sun for a hot water bottle at everyone's favourite hardware store, Wilko.  Everything which was wonky in The Nest has been fixed or painted and I've bottomed my sock drawer.  It's official, I've got cabin fever.

Locked down at work and at home; personally I feel it takes real skill to get stuffed on both levels.  Deep inside though, the lid came off my creative writing reserves and I woke up with a start as if from a long sleep in a ditch.  Suddenly I wanted to be an author again, a 'proper writer' of dark dystopian science fiction.  Obviously I'd already started considering a future with no water, precious few resources and heroes battling to save the world from an evil villain.  Oops! If I'd consulted the family crystal ball - we do have a cheap one but it's not exactly reliable - then I might have foreseen the reality which was burgeoning in our direction.   Now we're right in it  ... temporarily, of course.  The perfect time to start writing again.

You won't have seen the first chapter of my novel which I posted over a year ago because I deleted it last week.  It only had two page views, both of which were mine.  It was sad because I'd thrashed out the original idea over a bucket of coffee in the patisserie opposite Victoria's Secrets in the Bull Ring.  At any time if overwhelmed by creativity I could nip over the way for a quick browse and a cunning purchase of scanties.  Soon after the initial thrill of starting to write the great tome, I made the writer's classic mistake of telling someone else the story.

We have two new staff in my wing of the hospital since the departure of the dreadful Valkyrie. Champion, who is a funny, very smart woman who needs help seeking a new partner, and Frosty who hails from Essex and who regularly calls a spade an 'effing shovel'.  I love them both.  Keen to show off over lunch of a light salad and chips in the staff restaurant, I gave Frosty a quick outline of the story.  She fixed me with a stare and pronounced with absolute certainty ...
"That's Kiss of the Spider Woman set in a dystopian future instead of Argentina with a manga comic twist!"  Everyone's a critic.
"Is it?"  I've never read the book but I'm sure the film hasn't been shown on the Horror channel recently.  But I didn't want to diss her obvious love of literature and asked if she was sure.
"Positive," she barked back "I only gave the book to charity last week."  Damn!  That'll teach me not to ask questions of an Essex girl.  In creative circles, talent can only take you so far but with a bucket of perseverance and connections, a writer can make progress so I ploughed on.  'There could still be a book in this' I reasoned but after a period of drifting and reworking, I decided to do the kind thing and abandon The Order of Sanctity  at the 35,000 word point.  You see, I was thrashing away at the keyboard when I had a gin and tonic moment.
"I have become a Typewriter Monkey!" I felt like shouting but it was 2.00 am.
This revelation finally plucked my flight feathers right back to the quick.  As in my work life I'd also become a typewriter monkey - day in, day out, typing clinics of 20-30 letters about patients afflicted with bad hips and/or knees was stifling the last few bubbles of originality.

Currently I am classed as a key worker and have a letter to gain entry to supermarkets in the early hours but I won't use it.  I'm far away from patient care despite having to wear a mask to visit the facilities.  One of our consultants is very lofty in the Infectious Diseases department and I've been working on his reports for a change.  I'm sure he dreads heading out in public as everywhere he goes, he is interrogated by the nearest hypochondriac.  Last week, I observed a strange encounter between him and one of my male co-workers, VJ, who was crabbing down the main corridor with his back to the wall.  He was doing a good job of social distancing except he'd tied his mask under his nose so he could breathe properly.  The two men faced each other at about five feet eleven inches apart.
"Prof ... I think I've had corona virus."  Bless him, the good professor's face suggested he is a grand master of bluffing at the poker table.
"Were you ill before or after Christmas 2019?"  VJ had to think about the answer without counting on his fingers.
"Before."
"Then you haven't had it.  You've had the ghastly seasonal virus we all got between November and New Year."
"But I lost my sense of smell and taste and everything."
"Really?  Everything you ate tasted like wallpaper did it?"  The light which illuminated VJ's face was stellar.  The professor was now backing away towards the door of his consulting room possibly to shed tears of frustration.
"Oh yeah ... how did you know?"
"Because it's a symptom of the common cold but also of corona in some cases."
VJ felt his wish for two weeks off sick was about to be granted.  "So I have had it then?" he asked.
"No.  What you've had is a stinking head cold."

So it's nearly June and Summer is bursting out in all directions but whilst many tears have been shed over the last few months, we still need answers:
Who got corona first?  Someone has to be 'Patient Zero' whether it originated from eating bat shit or the result of a ghastly experiment, pinpointing it will make us all feel better to wag the finger of fate in a specific direction.
What precautions, if any, did they take to avoid spreading it to their nearest and dearest?
When they realised this was a right cock-up and that it couldn't be contained, did they think to mention it to the authorities?
Where exactly was this cooked up?  Conspiracy theories abound and books will be written but I want the accurate location to avoid it at all costs possibly into the next reincarnation.
Why aren't the surviving perpetrators in stocks being pelted by chunks of banana loaf?
How do they think the world is coming back from this?  I think the deficit in the global economy should be on the shoulders of those responsible ... except we'll never know who they are, will we?

On the upside, the shops are preparing to open in two weeks' time and I'm taking time off to handcraft a jolly mask which will actually fit my beak, unlike the flimsy blue one I've been given.  I won't be visiting Zara or touching lovely fabrics in John Lewis either but will stay away from the crowds who will be barrelling into shopping centres attempting to gain a scant grip on a new reality.

Tip of the Beak:  I'm loving the whole new world of orderly shopping with a special mention to Sainsbury's on Melton Road.  The social distancing zone is very clearly outlined but if you need Argos then the queue  is massive. I'm heading there now to fill up and return to The Nest in blissful isolation.  Alphonse is here of course using regular hand sanitiser and sporting a wavy mullet but he's been in isolation since he retired, so no worries there.  Stay safe everyone.

Raven