Sadly, I identify all too well with the sentiments expressed by Kerry Hudson (Struggling to pay at the supermarket till, I felt that childhood shame flooding back, 29 May). As a child from a poor family, I remember furtively hiding my yellow “free school dinner” ticket, identifiable to any onlooker by the different colour. I would palm it over to the dinner lady, swamped in shame – as if the polyester school uniform (provided by the local authority via vouchers from a portable building in the car park) weren’t evidence enough that I was marked out as an “under-being”.
Later in my life, despite hard-won success in study and work, disabling illness brought the burden of shame again. Feeling like a repellent Gollum, grovelling at the feet of the DWP through ever more punitive processes while, ironically, being so exhausted and unwell that I lacked the energy to prove the very illness in question.
