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Physical Helps Mental So…it turned out to be a ‘thing’ after all!
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nursery today
n the last article I said that by the time I’d finished writing that piece and sent it off then everything might have changed already. Exactly 46 minutes after I emailed it to Penny, we had Boris on our screens telling us that we were locked down, so that escalated a bit quicker than I expected. I always thought that 9/11 would be the global event that changed the world in my lifetime, but it is clearly this and it still hasn’t fully sunk in if I am honest with myself. I’m writing this in the first half of June, and although some elements of the lockdown have persisted we have now moved into something that removes some shackles from businesses. It seems so unfair that truly essential retailers that work in our industry had to close. Especially when April was full of busy B&Q car parks with people pushing trolleys full of ‘essential’ items such as paint brushes and Live Love Laugh signs and there were plenty of grey jogging-bottomed legs trotting out of Argos with whatever crucial plastic crap they ‘needed’ during
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But here w e are , sh op s are op en . Hope fully you ha d a goo d lon g th ink ab out th e en viron ment you no w offer for th e sh ort to med iu m term ah ea d of reopenin g th e front door s. haven ’t ch an ge dIf myoucu h th en take a moment to step ba ck an d th rou gh th e ey esseeofita nervous pregn ant lad y.
lockdown. We have toed the line and played with a much straighter bat than most other industries. Doors needed to be opened sooner. New parents need infant carriers to walk out of hospital and those infant carriers should be demonstrated and fitted in their car at the time of purchase. Pregnant couples need to browse and be able to stand behind the handlebars and try and fold a stroller and see if they can physically lift it. Remember, you sell alien products when the first baby is on the way as they’ve never had to consider or take any notice of this stuff before now. It’s OK when child number 2 is on the way, we all know that you can just carry that one around in a plastic bag and it can sleep in a drawer, but the first one is always precious. But here we are, shops are open. Hopefully you had a good long think about the environment you now offer for the short to medium term ahead of reopening the front
doors. If you haven’t changed much then take a moment to step back and see it through the eyes of a nervous pregnant lady. Are you managing to control the amount of people in the store at any one time? Is there any hand wash or sanitiser available? Does the store look and smell clean, and not because you’ve sprayed something but because you are actually cleaning every surface that gets touched regularly? Have you a series of bottlenecks on the shop floor where people cannot physically keep a safe distance from each other? These aspects and many more need to be honestly considered and