CHAPDISC: HBP2, Spinners End: sociological habitat

[deborahhbbrd]

No: HPFGUIDX 142075

One of Potioncat's excellent questions: "The neighborhood sounds
deserted, except for some streetlights that are still lit and the
presence of food wrappers at the river's edge. What can our RW
sociologists tell us about this neighborhood in the late 90's?"

Clearly the industrial infrastructure no longer exists; we're in what
used to be Dark, Satanic Mills territory but is now a postindustrial
waste land, or Waste Land ... can't help hearing echoes of TS Eliot in
that ghastly canal; from half-blood prince to fisher king, I wonder?
The fisher king being the agent of redemption, wounded until the
magical object is applied to his old injury to heal it ... might work,
at that!

As such, its inhabitants will be out of work and on the dole - enough
government subsidy to keep them alive, but not much more. Think Andy
Capp cartoons - one traditionally lies around all day watching TV,
drinks a lot of beer and eats takeaways. Sure enough, the fast-food
litter indicates invisible inhabitants.

You are not allowed to work while drawing unemployment benefits;
therefore, anyone in this kind of neighbourhood with more money than
usual is illegally employed. And the neighbours will not notice! They
will not notice the gang activity either - there's been rioting in
Birmingham in the last few days, gangs of black and Asian young men
causing major mayhem. Security cameras may spot them, but the people
next door won't. Ditto the drugs, the prostitution, the protection
rackets. (Birmingham's a long way to the south, but there are analogies.)

Which means that they wouldn't notice Snape either, or PP, regardless
of whether Spinners End contains an unplottable house or not. Good
security, and a wonderful atmosphere of seedy decay, work gone to
waste, hopelessness hanging over it like the smoke from the chimneys
used to do when there was work available, busy housewives and noisy
children.

What I'd like to know is where all those books came from. Never a very
literate neighbourhood at its best, I don't think ... so maybe they
were inherited from Mother Eleanor. Interesting titles, no doubt.

Deborah, remembering a sixties hit: We've got to get out of this
place, if it's the last thing we ever do.