Coronavirus in Newcastle: Novelty of lockdown gives way to fear of economic recession
The people who are still working in Newcastle's city centre look forward to the time when it will be bustling with people again.
Friday 15 May 2020 13:18, UK
This isn't right. Mick Higgins never gets the chance to properly wash out the bins at the Bigg Market in Newcastle city centre. Before COVID-19, there just wasn't time.
On a regular weekend morning there was always a sea of rubbish to collect up, an array of discarded bodily fluids to wash away and people staggering around in the early morning daylight trying to find their way home. Right now, though, the hub of Newcastle's legendary nightlife is dead.
It's so dead that Mick now plays "chase the crisp packet". If he finds one, he's off - determined to hunt it down in his city council vehicle. He loves this job so much he's excited to find that piece of litter. The Bigg Market has never been so clean.
He's been doing this job for 28 years and is dismayed to see the city that he loves so empty.
"It is soul destroying driving round the streets," he said.
"It would be nice just to get back to normal, if I'll be honest with you, and if that means the Bigg Market is a complete mess again so be it - it'll mean the city is buzzing again."
Like everywhere else Tyneside is slowly getting slightly busier with lockdown restrictions beginning to lift in England. But for the key workers who are the eyes and ears of Newcastle after hours, it is the strangest of times.
The emptiness is eerie. We jumped onto the Metro system at South Gosforth and joined the late shift - Craig Pearson, the driver, took us through empty stations and onward to the empty airport.
There are hardly any flights so, as usual now, nobody got on. They are here for the people who need them, but it is almost unsettling.
Craig said: "It's like the film 28 Days Later - a zombie film where the streets are empty - but without the zombies."
The novelty of life in lockdown has well and truly gone - but while London is seeing just 24 new cases of coronavirus a day, that figure is 4,000 a day in the North East, meaning it will be some time before anything can return to normal.
The prospect of a recession is chilling - in the North East they need no reminder of what a recession looks like and the pain it can bring.
"I have lost jobs," Craig said.
"I used to work for Northern Rock many years ago and look what happened to that.
"We were all made redundant and it is scary to think other people are going to go through that."
We got off at Haymarket in the city centre where the Metro staff were standing at the ticket barriers - just waiting for a passenger. But even when a soul does emerge up the escalators they are quieter than usual - this is one of the friendliest cities in the UK but that seems to have been taken down a notch. It has everywhere.
The one blessing of going to work for Lauren Shipley is that she gets to see her dad, Steve, who also works helping customers at Haymarket station. There is plenty of time to catch up with each other's lives.
"It's like this all the time pretty much," Lauren told us as we walked down an empty platform.
"You want it back to how it was, but nobody can say how long that'll be."