the times | Saturday October 17 2020 1GM 9
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houses. That club over there, that used
to be full of tailors and seamstresses.
My mum worked there. She caught TB
off the fibres. Nothing changes, right?”
Mr Hughes’ mum, Gladys, survived
her bout of TB and is 86. “She’s only got
one lung but even she is saying we can’t
carry on shutting down the economy,”
her son tells me. “We should shield the
old, the weak and the sick and let thea hero to save this Gotham on the Mersey
Manchester or Nottingham, where
infection rates are similarly bad) was
designated Tier 3 because there aren’t
any Tory seats here.
“The last Tory welcome in Liverpool
was Michael Heseltine after the riots in
1981,” says John Hughes, 54, a former
nightclub owner and now chairman of
Pubwatch. His job is liaising between
the night-time economy, the council
and the police. As a teenager and young
man, he witnessed the riots in Toxteth,
the deprivation and unemployment of
the two following decades and the
successful regeneration efforts since
the turn of the century. A lot of that ef-
fort was made in the hospitality sector,
turning the city into a big party destina-
tion. “If these new restrictions go on to
the new year,” says Mr Hughes, “there
won’t be a hospitality sector to come
back to.”
We’re talking in Concert Square,
where five cavernous bars ring a central
cobbled area usually thronged with
youngsters. Since Tuesday night, the
square has been fenced off and bars still
open are near-deserted.
The “Welcome Back, We’ve Missed
You” poster on the railings looks forlorn
and premature. Twenty years ago, Mr
Hughes tells me, “this area was pretty
much derelict, mostly old cotton ware-rest of us get on with it.” In the three
months since being allowed to reopen
on July 4, Mr Hughes says, pubs and
bars were “99 per cent compliant.
We’ve done everything asked of us: 70
people in a bar that can hold 600; music
restricted to 80 decibels; safety officers
checking every 20 minutes. We had a
great August and September. Then the
students came back.”
At this point, Terry O’Connor, 77,
resident on nearby Benson Street, joins
the conversation. “I don’t want to be
rude but the students are ungoverna-
ble,” he says. “And they’re overcrowded.
This is a small city.” He’s right about
that. Many northern cities have
similarly huge student populations, but
Liverpool’s are particularly tightly
packed. Also, as Mr O’Connor cheer-
fully confides, “we do a lot of drinking
here”. He proves as much by asking Mr
Hughes if he thinks he could get away
with a cheeky pint if he carried a dirty
dinner plate around with him. Mr
Hughes laughs and shows me a mock-
up on his phone of the “Stella sandwich”
loophole: a can of lager wedged
between two slices of bread. There’s a
pub on the edge of town, apparently,
that’s handing out plates of free scouse
— which may or may not qualify as a
“substantial meal” under the regula-tions — with the beer. “They won’t get
away with it for long,” grins Mr Hughes.
Revolution, a restaurant on Albert
Dock, displays a sign forbidding “kiss-
ing, handshakes and love bites”. But in
general, both scally dodges and scally
wit are in short supply.
Mr O’Connor says he’s all right, he’s
got four cans of Boddingtons for £3.
from Tesco. That’s the fear, that (even
though household mixing is banned)
people will simply socialise in each
other’s homes and the virus will
continue to spread that way, with
deleterious side-effects for mental
health, domestic abuse and possibly, as
unemployment bites, other forms of
crime too. “It’s not only the bars, it’s the
cabbies, then the hairdressers and nail
bars, the hotel trade, retail, and so on,”
sighs Mr Hughes. “I look in people’s
eyes and I worry about suicide. The city
feels lost.”
Down by the Mersey, I come across
Niamh, who doesn’t want to give her
surname. She’s 20 and not disposed to
lift the mood. Until Tuesday she was a
bar supervisor on Castle Street. Now
she’s out of work. “Right now,” Niamh
says ruefully, “to be a bartender in
Liverpool is the worst job you can have.
It’s hard. I worked on the checkout at
Tesco in the spring but I don’t want to dothat again. I’m good at me job, I’m al-
ways saying, ‘Put a mask on! Put a mask
on!’ I don’t know why we’ve been sin-
gled out. I live on me own. I’m just sitting
here having a little chill thinking about
what to do next. I’m pretty fed up.”
Niamh is not, she assures me, bother-
ed about Batman’s impending arrival.
Alan Steele, however, most certainly
is. Mr Steele, 51, of no fixed abode,
well-refreshed and eschewing (smart
Everton FC facemask aside) the
otherwise impeccable local sartorial
standards, is keen to talk. “Now be
honest brother,” he says, “are you from
Batman?” “No, The Times.” “Oh good,”
he replies without missing a beat, “f***
Batman and f*** Boris, put that in the
paper.” He goes on to critique the prime
minister’s performances at the dispatch
box. In this most political of cities, even
the vagrants watch PMQs. “He’s
disrespected Liverpool before, now he’s
done it again. We don’t need any help
from him.”
Mr Steele’s fellow Liverpudlians
would disagree but behind their masks
they aren’t holding their breath. Instead,
they’re preparing grimly to face the long
winter — one dark knight after another,
if you will — isolated and alone.
Do pork scratchings count as a Tier 3
meal? Carol Midgley, page 27A warning sign above one bar and
restaurant in Liverpool city centreNews
S
even people
were having a
chat outside
Nick Cobb’s
shop in
Folkestone, Kent.
Within minutes, a
passer-by went over
to remind the group
to disperse. The
illegal gathering was
over (Emma
Yeomans and Daniel
Clarke write).
The port town’s
locals credit their
ability to keep one
another in line for
Folkestone and
Hythe’s success at
keeping the virus at
bay — that, and a
shortage of young
people.
Surrounding
villages on the Kent
coast have the lowest
numbers of Covid
cases in England. In
the whole UK only
the Highlands,
Orkney and Shetland
have lower figures.
The rate has fallen
to 14.2 per 100,
people and dropped
by a third in the past
two weeks.
“It’s good here,” Mr
Cobb, 25, who works
at Teastones tea shop
with his mother Sev,
said. “People are
coming out of
lockdown but in a
responsible way.
“There’s no big
meet-ups — you get
the odd dog-walking
group or runners but
there’s not much
congregation. It has
been good for us as abusiness. Nobody
likes going into a shop
where the line is all
over the place or
people aren’t wearing
masks.”
The district has a
population density
slightly higher than
the national average.
It also has a fairly
elderly population,
with an average age of
47.3 compared with
40.3 nationwide. It’s
not a party town,
locals emphasize.
Amy Symons, the
manager of
homeware store
Moda, said that
people were finding a
“happy medium” on
leaving lockdown.
“Since we reopened
we haven’t been that
down on last year,”
she said.
Staycationers from
other parts of Kent
and further afield had
been a huge help, she
added.
Over summer, pubsand restaurants were
booked out, Edward
Datcu, 33, restaurant
manager at the Swan
Hotel in Hythe, said.
The 10pm curfew
had slowed trade but
not drastically, he
said. Only one person
in Kent has been
issued with a fine for
failing to wear a
facemask — and that
was in Folkestone.
Alan Pughsley,
chief constable of
Kent, said: “The
policing approach in
Folkestone and Hythe
mirrors our approach
across the county...
with enforcement a
last resort.”
Along the coast in
Sandgate, Sean
McFadden said he felt
as if he had been in a
bubble. He added: “Up
London when I’m
there, the coffee bars
and restaurants seem
rammed. It just feels
like everything will
get closed again.”Self-policing seaside
town is success story
Amy Symons, a shop manager, said that people
in Folkestone, left, were finding a happy mediumANDREW HASSON FOR THE TIMES