Alverstoke, a safe haven - then they opened the pubs | Rick Jackson

CLOSED: The Village Home pub, Alverstoke, has shut this week after a suspected case of coronavirus Picture: Sarah StandingCLOSED: The Village Home pub, Alverstoke, has shut this week after a suspected case of coronavirus Picture: Sarah Standing
CLOSED: The Village Home pub, Alverstoke, has shut this week after a suspected case of coronavirus Picture: Sarah Standing
I was starting to feel safer in our little corner of the world here in Alverstoke.

There had been no fresh cases of coronavirus reported in ages. And then the pubs reopened.

Walking the dog on Saturday evening, I went past one of our local pubs and was surprised to see how busy it was. It looked like a typical Saturday in there.

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The bar was busy, people were queueing for their drinks and groups were occupying the usual tables and chairs. There certainly didn’t seem to be much social distancing.

I could quite easily have popped in for a beer as the pub didn’t appear to be operating a booking system. It seemed like Covid-19 had gone away. I’m glad I didn’t.

Now we hear that someone in the pub has coronavirus. The pub is now shut and says it wants to reopen on Saturday.

On Sunday, we went to a local hotel. We had to book a slot. We were greeted at the garden gate by a member of staff in a face mask.

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We gave our names, applied hand sanitiser then found our table and chairs.

A waitress in PPE took our order and it was left on a table for us to collect.

It was a very different experience to the one I’d witnessed at the pub the night before.

Do we want Gosport to follow Leicester and head back into lockdown? Just because a selfish few cannot follow government advice.

And here’s the big problem for me.

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In defence of the pub, some government guidelines are only voluntary. Test and trace is voluntary.

Do you think many of the people in that pub on Saturday night will now be self-isolating?

The government needs to make its guidelines law, plain and simple.

For not everyone can be trusted to do the right thing and this experience proves that.

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I’m pretty sure all of us find much of this very confusing – what we can and what we can’t do? What precautions businesses should be taking?

In my opinion our government has been far too soft and that makes me very nervous.

Maybe that’s the plan?

Pompey need someone with a magic touch to take us up

I couldn’t fault the effort the Pompey players put in during both play-off matches against Oxford United, but sadly our luck ran out.

To a man they put in a proper shift and credit to Oxford, they nullified our threat as we did theirs. We did a job on each other.

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Because of this, neither team were able to show their real qualities. Under Kenny Jackett we’ve won a trophy and we’re heading to retain it at Wembley and we’ve had some impressive runs. But next season we need to show more consistency.

We looked very much a League One side in those two matches. We need a player who can add that missing spark. Has Paul Merson still got his boots?

Just in the nick of time, the best shave I have ever had

Shaving. Some men don’t do it, others hardly ever do, some spend hours trimming theirs, others just wet shave it all off. I’m somewhere in between. It depends on my mood. Beard, then clean.

Fancying a clean shave, I realised my two Gillette razors were older than time itself and I didn’t want to splash £15 on the same Mach 87,000 razor as before. At the bottom of the display was something different. A metal razor from Wilkinson, with a single blade. I went for it.

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It’s the choice of barbers. You drop the blade into the open doors and screw them shut. I’ve never given myself such a close shave, so much so, I lost count of the nicks. Blood everywhere, I was very happy!

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