Have you seen the paper today?

As I walk towards the Unity Office in the spring sunshine I see my friend waiting for her husband to return from reporting in at the Home Office as he must do every week. I stop and we chat about the meal we shared last week – delicious. She is waiting outside the Unity office because inside it is busy. There is a new man from Eritrea registering, two children running in and out playing and one woman is back again so we can help chase up her landlord, Angel (a private company which charges large rents to the Home Office making a profit from people seeking asylum who have no choice but to live in the flats offerred). Her washing machine still isn’t plumbed in and she has to share the flat with people she doesn’t know and she doesn’t have a lock on her room. Can we help get it sorted?

Someone passes me the paper. A picture from the protest outside the Home Office yesterday is on the front page. Someone else calls. Can I phone the police and arrange to go and collect the banners that they confiscated at the protest.

My friend’s husband, also my friend returns. He waves at a man across the road, says , “he’s from Chad, he’s been here 9 years. Last year he started having to report at the home office every week.”

Someone full of vigour comes in, puts on music and starts tidying up and cleaning.

I go outside and a man in the street shouts to me “Your protests won’t come to anything you know. Send the blacks back.” I feel cold and hope that my new friend inside hasn’t heard.

A man comes in asking if there is any news. He has a strong Glasawegian accent. He starts chatting. He has been here ten years. Last year he had to start reporting at the Home Office and he had his right to work taken away from him.

|A woman comes in a lot calmer than usual. She explains, she has started taking a tranquiliser before she comes to the Home Office to settle her nerves because she can’t take the stress of it.

There is a name that isn’t crossed off the list meaning that he hasn’t returned from the Home Office and has possibly been detained. I phone his friend. At first he doesn’t understand what I am staying, then he gets it. “I’ll contact him and get straight back to you”. He calls back in seconds, the man is safe, just didn’t put a line through his name when he returned. My embarassment at having needlessly called evaporates when he says “thank you, thank you for all your help.”

A woman leaves her little girl who plays silently on the plastic rocking horse and with the red toy bus. Everyone who comes in smiles at her but she hardly acknowledges them and just carries on playing.