Orchard Stories tells the story of a block of flats in West London over forty years.The book opens with a key turning point in the lives of the residents – the Covid pandemic. In aiming to answer the question, in what ways has the pandemic impacted on lives both at The Orchard and beyond, Catherine describes how enforced seclusion leads to the emergence of friendships and alliances, a new kind of neighbourliness.The author then moves on to locate the dramatic years of lockdown within a more ordinary slice of life – her long stay at The Orchard. She looks at the changing demography of this corner of Ealing – the shift from a settled, middle class community – ‘the Old Timers’ – to those who are highly diverse in terms of social class, age and ethnicity, a group she comes to see as ‘the New Cosmopolitans’. Orchard characters, both the Old Timers and the New Cosmopolitans tell their own stories of life at the Orchard from the nineteen eighties up to the recent Covid years.
