Going out with a baby just to go to the grocer across the street has become risky.

She made much of her humble origins as the daughter of a Grantham grocer, and had no time for the Establishment, which she blamed for Britain s moral and economic decline.

I watched the man open a pack of cigarettes with trembling hands and offer one to her, and that is the image of the night of the earthquake in my mind today a conservative grocer and a crying transvestite smoking together on the sidewalk.