Our Associate Clergy

Lockdown Diary

The gradual release from lockdown since last month’s issue has seen some welcome changes in Wimborne’s progress towards returning to normality.

Barry Gibbs

Shops are opening again! We are now seeing clothes shops, jewellers, photo shops and WH Smith adding to the food shops open since the beginning of lockdown. It has been interesting to observe the various ways retail outlets have gone about the distancing inside their premises. Gullivers has introduced an innovative system, with six people in at a time, customers being given the option of hand sanitising or wearing disposable gloves. You are encouraged to stay no longer than 10 minutes, but books can be perused with this method without having to be quarantined. We particularly liked the instructions set with

the background of a Penguin Book cover! Reopening can be managed with imagination and creativity. Take-away meals from pubs and restaurants have increased with Rimjihm’s Indian and Nepalese restaurant and The Coventry Arms both now offering a varied menu for delivery or takeaway, joining The Olive Branch, Minster Arms, Café in

the Square, and others. Dorset Council has been filming around the county for a promotional film about the reopening of small local businesses. Victoria Sturgess at Black Pug Books was nominated to be part of the project, which will be released on social media: keep an eye out!

Away from the retail sector another significant opening has happened this month - Wimborne First School’s handsome new building on the Badbury Reach development has now opened its doors to students for the first time, with Reception and Year 1 pupils and children of key workers . It was a welcome sight to see traffic controllers back in position at the beginning and end of the school day. Through lockdown, Allenbourn students have been set lessons online using Google Classroom. While Year 6 and key-worker children are now at school in a set of carefully planned ‘bubbles’, other Years are continuing their GC lessons, including art and PE. In their first week back, Year 6s planted a rainbow of flowering plants in pots, while the vegetables in the new trough continued to flourish (see photo next page top right, from the school’s Facebook page). As many people have abandoned their holidays and are turning their attention to their homes and gardens, local landscape and