This is a short collection of essays about the miserable state of Britain in the 70s and 80s – about how there is an acute need for a welfare state that works.

The author informs us that she can’t write a well-structured essay so she has fallen back on anecdotes. She portrays scenes from her own life, episodes involving herself and ones she has observed.

These are sober, bleak essays. I don’t know if things are better now in 2019, since I don’t live in Britain. Perhaps they are not better, but I certainly hope so.

Though the content is depressing, there is the usual humour, which Sue Townsend luckily cannot suppress.

She recounts the birth of her premature son, describes in detail the meagre finances of the working classes and shows how much child benefit actually covers.

She is visited by three teenagers who tell her “We’re leaving school in three weeks. Can you teach us to read?” It took 16-year-okd Gary three minutes to laboriously write his Christian name and surname. None of the lads could read so much as a cornflakes packet.

She gave the boys details of some evening classes they could attend, though she knew they would never do so.None of them had a book of any kind in the house. They lived in poverty in damp houses on a problem housing estate.

It turned out that the headmaster of their school was “mad and violent and given to sudden attacks of rage”. The author and a colleague went to the school to see for themselves. The headmaster showed them his collection of canes and told them that most of the children were mongrels – the results of in-breeding.

She tells of her stay in the hospital due to a heart attack. A nurse says, “Sue Townsend”, “how embarrassing to have the same name as that woman who writes those silly books.”

She tells us about street people, Panda Mary, the Happy Man, a black girl who walks outside naked and a friend who had a breakdown.

These are dire stories, as are all the stories in the book.

She tells us about Mrs Bradshaw, the first of her clients in her job as a community worker, who wanted her to sell her body after her death, but unfortunately no-one was interested because she didn’t have a rare disease.

This is a sad and dismal collection of essays, out of date now, but probably still relevant. I would recommend Sue Townsend’s other, more cheerful books. ( )