Maybe this is the blitz spirit
I'm not sure if this is actually true - some of the things going around have a touch of the urban legendary about them - but people policing other people's shopping baskets for 'non-essential' items?
I don't think this is so much going back to muttering about 'having dealings with spivs for black market goods' as 'entering into somewhat dodgy exchange of favours [we do not say what those favours are] with butcher/grocer/local farmer over rationed items'...
Also people dobbing other people in for being out and about when they shouldn't (if they are) - a bit like people getting very officious about other people's blackout and quite possibly working off longstanding grudges and feuds by grassing them up, with or without cause, to the ARP wardens...
Or muttering about people with large houses who somehow have not got any evacuees billetted on them...
Subset of #VeryBritishProblems, I fear.
Okay, there have been reports of the police being just a tad heavy-handed - Stephen Kinnock targeted by police for visiting father, Neil - but, on the other hand, if they have time on their hands for this sort of thing, we must suppose, I suppose? that they are not having to deal with actual rioting in the streets, looting of supermarkets and the entire breakdown of law'n'order that so many dystopian works have led us to anticipate?
Rather than people being so bored stuck isolating at home that they are sticking beans magnets up their noses?: 'Now, my dears, don't let baby fall out of window, don't play with the matches, and don't put beans up your noses.'
Though I find that is in Little Men rather than Little Women and thus possibly not as well known as if it was in the latter. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3059200.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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