For thousands working in bars, restaurants and hotels, the future is uncertain. We talk to the casualties of lockdown – and to those battling to support them
When chef Sam Pinnock lost his job in late February, he offered to help around his landlady’s house in exchange for a rent discount. But tensions rose and the relationship broke down. “I was trapped, shouting at my friends on the phone, but no one could help me out,” says 26-year-old Pinnock. He’d often go and sit in a field for hours.
By June, the situation was impossible. Pinnock was waiting for a self-employed grant from the government when he was asked to leave. (As a lodger, he was classified as an excluded occupier, making him exempt from the eviction ban.) He went to his parents’ place in London. They both have health issues and Pinnock didn’t want to expose them to the virus, so for the next month, he slept in a shed in their garden, creeping into the house only when they were out to shower and use the toilet. “You can’t live in a shed,” he says. “It was fun for the first week but the novelty wore off.”
I saw masses of people with skills sitting around doing nothing, and a ridiculous amount of food going to waste
We’re seeing people who were working so precariously they’re not even caught by the furlough scheme or universal credit
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