The process is OK,” he says. “The hardest part is the period of grief you feel afterwards. It was a really tough self-acceptance process as I have always been seen as this big business guy. Now I feel like I have failed, but what I have realised is it is not the end of the world – after 12 months my life will return.” An important source of such labour was from Commonwealth countries, given their specific entry and citizenship rights in the postwar period, says Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips of the University of Birmingham and the Institute for Research into Superdiversity.

McCall’s Organics has been serving customers in the same location for the past 128 years. In the centre of the shop – hidden among the locally grown vegetables, seeds, vegan sausage roll filling and fresh spices – is an original red barrow that was used to wheel produce to and from the market over a century ago. “There is no other independent shop in Manchester where you can buy the variety and quality you can buy here,” shop owner Mark McCall, 59, tells me. Ten years ago, he opened another shop next door, McCall’s Exotics, to expand his offering. How have they lasted so long? He thinks it’s partly down to the growing trend of young people buying food to eat that evening. “Younger generations are more inclined to cook what they see on TV or on their phones,” he says. “Here you can buy ingredients to cook any cuisine you want: Indian, Jamaican, Thai …” As it turned out, the local producers, less than 40 miles from the plant, were not only cheaper but also didn’t have to be paid in precious foreign currency. Instead of buying 500 tons of meal from abroad, the company now buys 100 tons. The latest findings may go some way to filling this knowledge gap by providing unique fossil evidence of an early archosaur relative that had likely evolved the ability to walk upright on all fours before the mass extinction, the researchers said.For the artist himself art is not necessarily therapeutic; he is not automatically relieved of his fantasies by expressing them. Instead, by some perverse logic of creation, the act of formal expressions may simply make the dredged-up material more readily available to him.”

Amanda’s advice to others is to be honest with yourself when things start going wrong and seek advice immediately from government-approved debt organisations, such as StepChange. Perhaps the biggest threat to convenience stores is a declining number of people who want to work in them. McCall says that, even if his premises weren’t under threat from developers, none of his children want to take on the shop and continue its 128-year history, because they’ve seen him working for seven days a week and want to do something different.

Priority Access

In January 2020 I opened the doors to my counselling business. Then, just a couple of months later we were hit by a pandemic that would bring the world to a standstill. Being in the centre of a community can also expose staff to crime, racism and aggressive behaviour. I spoke to Ravi, 29, who is working in Manchester Mini Market on Oldham Street. The shop is a classic British newsagents that has become a local attraction because of its huge selection of cold drinks, with every obscure flavour of fizzy juice imaginable, from watermelon Tango to mojito-flavoured 7up. Local publication The Manc described it as “like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but for pop”. Ravi says that almost every day there is an incident with theft: just yesterday, a man loudly screamed at him and continued abusing shop staff outside once he was physically removed from the premises. This was the second incident in a week. The campaigns were macro and micro. My mother, armed with a bible and a food thermos, with children underfoot, staged a day-long sit-in directly outside our director of education’s private office when my sister was allocated a lesser school than merited. The director hunkered down – for who was he to be challenged by a female immigrant, but she had stuff to eat and read, more patience than him and a deal of indignation. By day’s end, the allocation was changed. It took cussedness to prevail.