Came home to mouse on the work surfaces. Shrieked like a 1950s housewife and proceeded to race around the kitchen trying to catch it. I didn't.
Once I settled down, I realised I should probably tell the neighbours in case it's an infestation. Told a white woman who told me how Bengali people bring things in with their big rice bags. Things like cockroaches and mice. I said I had a 10kg rice bag and anyway, no shop keeper would be able to keep going if they sold rice with mice in it. Instead of realising the logic of a situation, like, there are mice in London and sometimes they get into homes, even ones high up in tower blocks like mine, people look at whoever seems the most foreign, the most recent migrants and blame them. Dirt and disease is always blamed on someone else, if it can be. If there's any way of getting away with it.
If I wasn't so schooled in that kind of libel, libels around disease and dirt and foreign-ness, I might even believe the stories about "them". People say them with such conviction - even "nice people".