Gatecrashing bar mitzvahs, quarantine quizzes and climbing Everest indoors – here’s a slew of things to do to stay connected without stepping outside

Lockdown could have seen us wallowing in some pretty unusual hermetic behaviour. Obsessively rearranging your groceries by best-before date. Binge-watching old episodes of Terry and June. Blankly staring at the forks in your cutlery drawer wondering why they have four prongs and not three.

Instead, the past few weeks have shown that being shut away could be making us more connected with each other. Thanks to strong internet networks and an array of digital apps and video communication software, we’re spending more quality time with loved ones, rehabilitating old relationships and forging new ones. Indeed, a recent study by Channel Mum found a quarter of British people now talk with neighbours they previously ignored. In short? Being confined to quarters is helping us rediscover a new sense of community.

With disinformation connecting coronavirus to 5G masts, fortune cookies and eating bat soup, here are some of the worst examples of misinformation surrounding the pandemic

If there’s one thing we know about Covid-19, it is that the pandemic is incredibly infectious. At the same time, the volume of disinformation from doctored photos to false rumours and hoax videos spreading online has grown at a worrying pace.

In etymological terms, the word “viral” comes from the stem word “virus”. And the viral misinformation can be a danger in itself. Just think of the recent petrol bomb attacks on 5G phone masts because of a widely believed – but unfounded – link to coronavirus.

for Cait

The Brimstone is back
in the woken hills of Vallombrosa,
passing the word
from speedwell to violet
wood anemone to celandine.
I could walk to you now
with Spring just ahead of me,
north over flat ground
at two miles an hour,
the sap moving with me,
under the rising
grass of the field
like a dragged magnet,
the lights of the flowers
coming on in waves
as I walked with the budburst
and the flushing of trees.
If I started now,
I could bring you the Spring
for your birthday.

Set after the Great Depression, Morrison’s heartbreaking debut explores beauty and finds joy where there really should be none

This week, amazingly, I read a book. Just the one, though – let’s not get excited. I suspect I was only able to do so because I wasn’t reading for pleasure, but because I’ve been asked to write a foreword for it. The book I read was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a novel about a young, dark-skinned girl growing up in the US after the Great Depression who believes herself to be ugly; she wishes for blue eyes in the hope that they will make her beautiful. I had started to read it a few years ago, but was so overwhelmed that I had to put it down. This time, I knew, contractually, that I was going to tackle it head on.

Usually I blitz through a book. But it’s Toni isn’t it, so you’ve got to gear yourself up for heartbreak, some trauma, and also to learn some things about yourself, and human nature, that you’d rather not be faced with. If she did one thing impeccably, it was holding a mirror up to society and saying: “Look at how we live. Are you proud of that?” And the answer cannot always be yes.

Singer’s new documentary about the 1960s Laurel Canyon music scene shows why there is no substitute for creative collaboration

Bob Dylan’s son, the musician and performer Jakob Dylan, has urged young people to get together in person to make music and not to rely on technology, after fronting an elegiac film about how the ageing “giants” of rock gathered together to share ideas and refine their sounds.

Digital files now allow singers and musicians to hear each other across great distances, and even to collaborate on new songs, but it should never replace the habit of playing together, Dylan argues.

(Atlantic)
This solo debut from the frontwoman of pop-punk stadium stars Paramore is a riot of lust, funk and femininity

Maturity is an often derided concept in a youth-facing art form. But when Simmer, a song about repressed feminist rage buoyed by creepy electronics – the lead track from Hayley Williams’s debut solo album – was released in January, it signalled an intriguing sea change in an artist previously known as a bouncy, flame-haired emo cheerleader.

The story of how Hayley Williams, now 31, went from leading angsty emo shoutalongs in the Tennessee pop-punk band Paramore to releasing these startling songs about rage, femininity and suicidal thoughts is one of the knottier yarns in contemporary American guitar music. Her trio-of-EPs album is now complete, with the final EP – and a physical album uniting all three – released last Friday.

The wildly popular game gives players a place to socialize with others or simply escape while on lockdown for coronavirus

As shelter in place orders around the world have left many people trapped at home indefinitely, some have found a new place to meet up: inside the digital world of wildly popular Nintendo game Animal Crossing.

Released in late March, Animal Crossing: New Horizons quickly became the top game in the US. In it, users explore a carefree pastel environment, growing fruits and flowers, catching bugs or fish to sell, and making friends with other characters in an open-ended simulation.

Coronavirus has robbed the Democrat of his typical back-slapping approach as he faces growing scrutiny and a third-party challenge

The Tampa, Florida, rally for Joe Biden on Thursday evening began as it normally might have, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed all aspects of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer pleaded with supporters to volunteer and a local DJ spun R&B music between speakers.

But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that was where the similarities ended.

Detailed pictures of planet glowing through clouds were taken with telescope in Hawaii

Astronomers have captured some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground using a technique known as “lucky imaging”.

The observations, from the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s dormant volcano Mauna Kea, reveal lightning strikes and storm systems forming around deep clouds of water ice and liquid. The images show the warm, deep layers of the planet’s atmosphere glowing through gaps in thick cloud cover in a “jack-o-lantern”-like effect.

Senior health official says virus exposed ‘weak links’ in way country manages epidemics

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China will reform its disease prevention and control system to address weaknesses exposed by the coronavirus outbreak, a senior health official has said.

China has been criticised domestically and abroad for being initially slow to react to the outbreak, which started in Wuhan. The virus has now infected almost 4 million people around the world, and almost 250,0000 people have died from the Covid-19 disease it causes.

British medical journal’s editorial says the Brazilian president’s disregard for lockdown measures is damaging

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The biggest threat to Brazil’s ability to successfully combat the spread of the coronavirus and tackle the unfolding public health crisis is the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.

In an editorial, The Lancet said his disregard for and flouting of lockdown measures was sowing confusion across Brazil, which reported a record number of Covid-19 deaths on Friday, and is fast emerging as one of the world’s coronavirus hot spots.

After the justice department dropped charges against Trump’s ex-national security adviser, Obama expressed fear the US is headed in a dangerous direction

Barack Obama has reportedly said the “rule of law is at risk” in the US, after the justice department said it would drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Related: For Trump, l'etat, c'est moi. Attorney General Barr does whatever he wants | Lloyd Green

Unemployment rate rose to 14.7% from just 4.4% in March as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the global economy

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More than 20 million people in the US lost their jobs in April and the unemployment rate more than trebled as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the world’s largest economy, triggering a financial crisis unseen since the Great Depression.

The Department of Labor announced Friday that the US unemployment rate rose to 14.7% from just 4.4% in March and a near 50-year low of 3.5% in February before the US was hit by the virus.

Scientists identify thousands of extreme events, suggesting stark warnings about global heating are already coming to pass

Intolerable bouts of extreme humidity and heat which could threaten human survival are on the rise across the world, suggesting that worst-case scenario warnings about the consequences of global heating are already occurring, a new study has revealed.

Related: One billion people will live in insufferable heat within 50 years – study

Labour’s shadow foreign secretary says coronavirus crisis exposes ‘myth of exceptionalism’

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Lisa Nandy has said the government’s “go it alone” approach left Britain unable to to prepare for the coronavirus crisis as she urged Boris Johnson to spearhead international cooperation to create and distribute a vaccine.

In her first newspaper interview since becoming shadow foreign secretary, the former Labour leadership candidate said the aftermath of the pandemic should mark a “serious reckoning” about Britain’s role in the world. She criticised the “myth of exceptionalism”, which she said was part of the country’s self-image.

Nadarajah Nithiyakumar held in custody after being discharged from hospital

A father has been charged with murdering his two young children at the family home.

Pavinya Nithiyakumar, aged 19 months, and Nigash Nithiyakumar, who was three years old, suffered fatal knife wounds at their house in Ilford, east London, on 26 April.

Complaints soar over useless face masks, handmade sanitisers and school meal scams

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More than 500,000 unusable face masks, and a garage selling fake Covid-19 testing kits, are among the hundreds of frauds investigated by trading standards officers since the start of the lockdown.

According to the Local Government Association, fraudsters have gone into overdrive during the past six weeks to exploit the public’s fears and the fact that they are stuck at home.

NHS staff from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds may be given roles away from the frontline under plans to reduce their disproportionately high death rate from Covid-19.

The Guardian revealed last week that minority groups were over-represented by as much as 27% in the overall Covid-19 death toll. Additionally, 63% of the first 106 health and social care staff known to have died from the virus were black or Asian, according to the Health Service Journal.

Senior reporter Haroon Siddique looks at the figures and explains why BAME people may be more at risk.

• British BAME Covid-19 death rate 'more than twice that of whites'
  
• ‘So much living to do’: stories of UK's coronavirus victims

Conspiracy theories linking 5G technology to coronavirus have resulted in dozens of phone masts across the UK being vandalised in recent weeks. Theories about the dangers of 5G had already been circulating, despite regulators confirming that the radiation levels of the new technology are well within safe boundaries. So how did the conspiracy incorrectly linking it to 5G start? And is 5G really dangerous? We explain why 5G has nothing to do with Covid-19

As lockdown continues, Owen Jones speaks to private renters about how the pandemic has affected them. From activists in tenants' unions and NHS workers struggling to find accommodation to students who’ve had their final terms disrupted and are left unsure about what to do with their accommodation, he asks them if they are worried about what comes next 

A street artist called Msale has taken it upon himself to create giant murals bringing public health messages directly to the overcrowded Mathare slum in Nairobi. With half a million people living in such 'a squeezed area'  social distancing is quite impossible to achieve, says Msale, so he is providing information for people on how to keep safe in the 'simplest, clearest' way he knows

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The spread of Covid-19 in India has been catastrophic for millions of its poorest and marginalised residents who are bearing the brunt of the world's biggest shutdown. Hannah Ellis-Peterson tells us how coronavirus and the lockdown is further dividing the country along class and religious lines

• In the most vulnerable countries, poverty could be as deadly as the coronavirus crisis
• Destitute migrant workers in India forced to pay train fares home

• This video was amended on 7 May 2020 to clarify that there are millions of migrant workers in India, but not 480 million as an earlier version suggested.
  

Despite a decade-old financial crisis that has crippled its hospitals, Greece appears to be keeping its coronavirus outbreak under control, with a far lower death toll than many other European nations. Dr Yota Lourida, Infectious Diseases specialist at Sotiria hospital in Athens, explains how it dealt with the crisis, and the steps taken by the country to mitigate against potentially catastrophic outcomes

Lebanon’s coronavirus lockdown has sent an economy already in deep trouble into freefall, and many are struggling to survive. Gino Raidy is an activist who was prominent during the October 2019 anti-government corruption protests. Now, with many fearing hunger and believing there is nothing left to lose, he is helping to keep demonstrators safe as they demand real and lasting change

• You think we care about masks?': anger and poverty grip Lebanese city

• Buy a copy of this cartoon in our print shop

For a while supper and wine were sufficient; now I’m watching every adaptation that is better than its source material

I suspect I’m not alone in this but, at some point in the past two weeks, I hit my lockdown wall. Not literally, although apparently the “banging one’s head against the kitchen wall” phase kicks in on the eighth week, so that’s something to put in the diary. But last week I felt really, really over it. Enough with every day being the bloody same; enough with watching my children become increasingly fretful because they haven’t seen their friends in over a month, the equivalent of five years to a pair of four-year-olds. But unless you want to be one of those delightful people protesting the lockdown in the US, clothed in stars and stripes, AK-47s across their backs, what choice do we have? So, like Bill Murray, we grind out the same day, again and again and again.

The trick is to invent things to look forward to. For a while, “supper” and “wine” were sufficient, but repetition has dulled their efficacy. So I set myself challenges, driven on by the thrill of completion. Some people hear the word “challenge” and think, “Fitness!” Those people are not me. “Rewatch the entirety of 30 Rock” is more my speed. It is so soothing to watch a show about a luxuriantly bouffanted New York tycoon who isn’t a moron. In a just world, Jack Donaghy would be the US president instead of, well, you get the point. Then, sparked by his brilliant turn as Chris Tarrant on the ITV drama, Quiz, my next challenge was, “Watch every Michael Sheen performance in which he plays a real person”. This was deeply enjoyable, even if, in my lockdown-confused mind, I now think Brian Clough interviewed Richard Nixon on TV and Kenneth Williams was prime minister when Diana died.

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Charlie I’Anson’s contract in the third tier has been terminated but the lockdown has left him unable to travel

Charlie I’Anson spent Thursday packing up boxes in the small flat he rents near Madrid, finalising the details of his dismissal from the football club for whom he played, and trying to contact the police to request permission to travel home. The night before, the news slipped out: two months after the last match, and on the day the first and second division players returned to work, the football federation decided to cancel the rest of the season in Spain’s third and fourth tiers. Like thousands of footballers, the English centre-back’s season was over with 10 matches remaining.

Related: Covid-19's impact on football: 'It could take 10 years to get where we were'

• World champion not relishing racing without fans
• Hamilton appreciates sport’s importance to many

Lewis Hamilton believes returning to grand prix racing without fans will be an “empty” experience as Formula One prepares to launch the new season behind closed doors.

F1 expects to hold its first race on 5 July in Austria as a double header followed by two meetings at Silverstone, all without spectators. However, there remains the possibility that government quarantine restrictions may make travel for F1 teams unfeasible.

It is among the most international of sports, but countries have had to look inwardly in order to restart the action

On Thursday afternoon in Minsk, elite international athletes returned to competition. Two Belarusians kicked tennis off as the world No 11, Aryna Sabalenka, and the No 50, Aliaksandra Sasnovich, took to the court. Even in Belarus, where the country has relentlessly carried on as much of the world around it has come to a halt, the scene underlined the new normal.

The pair humbled themselves to picking up their own balls and their stage was a small indoor hard court lined with one linesman per side and a handful of spectators. After Sabalenka sealed the victory, the two friends were not allowed to embrace. They tapped the other’s racquet and Sabalenka blew a kiss. They laughed.

• Follow a classic Merseyside derby at Wembley, as it happened
• Everton v Liverpool at Wembley – in pictures
• Email Scott with your thoughts here

3.48pm BST

Half-time advertising break.

3.46pm BST

And that’s the end of the first 45. Plenty of thinking to do for Kenny Dalglish, Bob Paisley and the rest of the Liverpool management team. Everton took a while to get going, but they eventually assumed control and have been much the better team since. Peter Reid, Kevin Ratcliffe and Gary Lineker have been the standout turns. They deserve their lead. Unless there’s a seismic shift in momentum, Everton will be drinking from the cup of redemption in about one hour’s time!

Charlie, 13, starts his morning with 40 press-ups; William, 15, spends an hour a day working out. But when does a healthy interest become a dangerous obsession?

Charlie is working on two things in lockdown. First, his studies: at 13, he’s the first to admit his focus is patchy. “I don’t do a lot of homework,” he says. “My mum complains about that all the time.” That isn’t to say he hasn’t thought about a career. “I wanted to be a game designer, but now I think the future’s in diseases, in microbiology, so I am also interested in that. A bit.”

His other work requires hours of dedication and is something Charlie has genuine enthusiasm for: working on his body. His daily routine starts with 40 press-ups while his shower is running. He eats five eggs and four pieces of toast for breakfast. His ideal lunch would be grilled fish and rice, but when he is at school he typically has to eat pasta with tuna sauce, since the canteen’s focus is feeding children, not lean body sculpting. “He won’t eat sausages or any processed stuff,” says his mother, Helen. She is married and lives in Liverpool with the couple’s three children, aged five to 13.

Teenagers affirm evidence that suggests they are particularly struggling with coronavirus crisis

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When, in late February, Betsy Sheil turned 16, she thought she was staring down the end of secondary school, not the beginning of global pandemic.

“I was going to finish year 11 and do my GCSEs, then I was going to have a really long summer with my friends, hopefully go abroad – have that summer that everyone has.”

When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman

• Interview: ‘Our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate’

For centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures. That cynical image of humanity has been proclaimed in films and novels, history books and scientific research. But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind. This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don’t even know about each other.

When I started writing a book about this more hopeful view, I knew there was one story I would have to address. It takes place on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. A plane has just gone down. The only survivors are some British schoolboys, who can’t believe their good fortune. Nothing but beach, shells and water for miles. And better yet: no grownups.

Five-point plan to protect renters comes as poll shows 1.7 million people fear unemployment

Labour is calling on the government to draw up emergency measures to protect renters beyond June as polling shows up to 1.7 million people in the private sector fear that they will lose their jobs this summer.

Dire economic forecasts released this week, including a Bank of England warning that the country faces its worst recession in 300 years, has prompted Labour to rapidly escalate its call for current protections for the rented sector, like the three-month ban on evictions in England and Wales, to be extended.

Joint statement insists return will not happen until stringent ‘test and trace’ regime in place

Ministers’ plans to reopen schools as early as 1 June are in serious doubt after unions representing teachers and school staff insisted that they would not consider a return without a stringent coronavirus “test and trace” regime.

In an unusual joint statement, which one senior union official said indicated that an early return to a normal school timetable was “off the menu”, the Trades Union Congress said that there should be “no increase in pupil numbers until full rollout of a national test and trace scheme”, and called for the establishment of a Covid-19 taskforce with government, unions and others to agree on the safe reopening of schools.

Security council had spent weeks seeking resolution but Trump administration opposed mention of organization

The US has blocked a vote on a UN security council resolution calling for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic, because the Trump administration objected to an indirect reference to the World Health Organization.

The security council has been wrangling for more than six weeks over the resolution, which was intended to demonstrate global support for the call for a ceasefire by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. The main source for the delay was the US refusal to endorse a resolution that urged support for the WHO’s operations during the coronavirus pandemic.

Teenager remains in hospital as two men are arrested after collision on Streatham High Road

A 16-year-old cyclist is in a life-threatening condition after being hit by two cars in south London.

The boy was critically injured in the collision in Streatham High Road shortly before 11.20pm on Friday.

Systemic flaws within Glynn county’s district attorney offices led to a lack of action against the men involved in this ‘modern lynching’

In the days and weeks after Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed, multiple Glynn county law enforcement officials failed to thoroughly investigate his death and, in one case, refused to allow police officers to make arrests, the Guardian has learned.

Related: Ahmaud Arbery is dead because Americans think black men are criminals | Benjamin Dixon

His 1955 song Tutti Frutti, with the lyric ‘awopbopaloobop alopbamboom’, and a series of follow-up records helped establish the genre and influence a multitude of other musicians

Little Richard, one of the pioneers of the first wave of rock’n’roll, has died. He was 87.

Richard – whose real name was Richard Penniman – had been in poor health for several years, suffering hip problems, a stroke and a heart attack.

Concerns raised about ‘disproportionate’ use of force after young black man is seriously injured

The police watchdog has launched an investigation after a black man in his 20s was left with a life-changing injury after he was shot with a stun gun by officers in north London.

Police on patrol in Haringey chased the man on Monday after he ran away from them following an approach, it is understood. They used the stun gun as he jumped over a wall and he fell, suffering serious back injuries, which his family fear could leave him at least partially paralysed.

If you would like to take part in a project about love and loss, we’d like to hear from you

After losing his father and younger sister in recent years, photographer Simon Bray has an appreciation of what it feels like to lose someone close to you, and through his photography project Loved&Lost, he offers the opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate those who are no longer with us.

If you have lost someone through coronavirus and would like to take part, we’d like to hear from you.

This week the Upside reflects on the community spirit felt in our current crisis and the one that ended in 1945

Guardian colleagues have been up to all sorts during lockdown – when they’ve not been working hard that is. At least three have acquired pets and many are digging up the garden or allotment. Potato printing, street chalk drawing, spring cleaning, DIY, it’s all going on. One particularly ingenious staffer is knitting woollen hats for boiled eggs.

Islanders are coming to terms with unexpected publicity from the contact-tracing pilot project

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Last Sunday, we woke to the news that the Isle of Wight really had been chosen as the pilot location for the NHS coronavirus contact-tracing app, the idea having been floated by the leader of the council at the start of the previous week.

Thus a manic week began here at News OnTheWight, where we’ve been pumping out stories as usual, taking part in national media briefings, delving into details of the app and exploring privacy issues while dealing with queries from media outlets from around the world. All sorts of organisations started pushing press releases supporting the app – the most unexpected being the Church of England.

When Matt Hancock, the health secretary, announced at last Monday’s press conference, “Where the Isle of Wight goes, Britain follows”, there was a collective spitting out of tea on the island and beyond. Of course there were the predictable jibes – “How do I install the app on my fax machine?” was one of the best we heard, and once again, creativity was ignited with memes and T-shirts.

With such attention, locally it felt like little else but the app was discussed.

How has the app gone down? Lots of people seem to be jumping on board, claiming any perceived privacy downsides as a small price to pay. Others, with earlier smartphones, were excluded. Older residents overheard in the post office said they really wanted to use the app but their steam-powered mobile phones weren’t capable.

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Britain is a latecomer to decarbonising transport but changes under lockdown and initiatives abroad could spark a revolution

It was a grim irony that the best transport news in ages was buried in the first few days of the coronavirus lockdown. On 26 March, the government published a document, Decarbonising Transport, which went further in facing up to the problem of emissions from air and vehicle traffic than most campaigners had dared to hope for.

The challenge is enormous. In 2016, transport overtook energy to become the single biggest source of domestic emissions. Motor vehicles on their own are responsible for around a fifth of the total. On aviation, the UK is the world’s third-worst polluter, behind China and the US.

• GoFundMe page for Navajo and Hopi aid lists many Irish names
• Choctaw Nation sent donation in 1847 for potato famine victims

The list of recent donors reads like an Irish phone book. Aisling Ní Chuimín, Shane Ó Leary, Sean Gibbons, Kevin Boyle, Kevin Keane, Clare Quinn, Eamonn McDonald, on and on down a GoFundMe page that by Friday had raised $3.15m of a $5m goal.

The individual amounts are not remarkable – $10, $20, $30, some exceeding $100 – but the story behind the donations stretches back two centuries and encompasses a singular act of generosity that forged a bond between Native Americans and Ireland, a bond now renewed in the coronavirus era.

Country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko boasts of holding only parade in former Soviet Union

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Thousands of people, including elderly veterans of the second world war, turned out for Belarus’s Victory Day military parade despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Images from the parade showed crowds packed on to parade bleachers as the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted of holding the only parade in the former Soviet Union to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany.

They believed insurance would cover the pandemic but have received demands for thousands

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Couples who have been unable to get married because of the coronavirus lockdown have had their wedding insurance claims rejected – in some cases despite being assured they were covered before buying their policy.

The Guardian has heard from people who have lost thousands when claims were turned down by provider WeddingPlan Insurance.

Would-be cyclists keen to exercise during the lockdown have cleared stores of their stock

Isabel had not ridden a bike since university 10 years ago when lockdown motivated her to seek out two wheels. But half a dozen cycle shops in south London gave her the same answer: no chance. We’re out of stock.

One or two said they could sell her a high-spec racing bike for a price in the region of £1,000. The others advised her to place an order, wait a couple of weeks for the bicycle to be delivered from the manufacturer, then another week or so for it to be built by the store. And there was no option to try before buying.