Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

You can’t sing in church but you can get a tattoo

The worst of everything is now freely available, but saving our souls is strictly rationed

Scenes from English life: post-lockdown you can place a bet or buy a drink but you still can't save your soul. Credit: Oscarhill/iStock 
issue 01 August 2020

From my seat in the greasy spoon café I looked out on a typical English row of shops on a typical English street in a typical English village turned suburb.

It was a rundown block consisting of a betting shop, a hairdresser, a charity shop, a chemist, an off-licence, a tattoo parlour and, right at the end, a ‘wellbeing’ clinic, which I took to be a place selling methods to undo all the damage done in the other places.

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