Friday 24 July 2020

Back to Powerleague - I feel like a human being for the first time since March

For the first time since February, I played five a side football at Powerleague in Mill Hill last night. The rest of the boys played a couple of times in March before lockdown, but I had a pretty bad knee injury on 27th Feb, so missed those. The injury only finally cleared up a couple of weeks ago, but I was really nervous. Many thanks to Jill at Mill Hill Physio, who helped me get it on the right track. Sadly when you are 57 years old, things take longer to heal. Last night was a strange game. Just about everyone had put on a few pounds and although some had kept fit, football fit is different. After ten minutes, I was ready for a spell in goal.

The great thing about football is that for the hour, you don't think about any of the other things that burden us. At the end of it, everyone seemed almost elated to have played. It wasn't the best of games, but after the whole covid lockdown, it really was a very refereshing experience. It was only this morning when I woke up, that I realised what a burden had been lifted. I feel a spring in my (achy) legs. Tonight we will be having a bear and something to eat at The Rising Sun.

From a business point of view, it's been an interesting week. When we did our projections, we assumed that the studio would do 10% of its normal turnover in June from 16th,  25% of its normal July turnover, 50% of its normal August, 75% of its normal September turnover. For June it was 15% and for July so far it's been approx 40%, so we are ahead of where we thought we'd be. In short we are not out of the woods, but we are walking towards the exit a bit faster than we anticipated.

I spent the morning putting up signage advising shop customers to wear face coverings. It seems that people are not quite on side with this so far, but we will get there. I think at the moment, gentle reminders is order of the day.

Lets just hope that we are all sensible and we don't do things that will bring a second wave.

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