A community tells how its local shop has helped it cope during the pandemic and lockdowns.
Those who know Fairstead Community Shop well, compare it to Dr Who's time-travelling police box, the TARDIS
Run entirely by volunteers, it sells donated goods as cheaply as it can to the community that surrounds it.But making a purchase is only one of a number of reasons people visit the shop. Some come to use the food bank, others just come for the company. She first started working at the shop in its previous life when it was run by a charity. When the charity pulled out, she stepped in to take it over as a volunteer-run venture."It became my safety bubble," she says. "When the charity shop closed down I organised a petition to get the local authority to let me run it.
"We keep the prices for things like children's clothes as low as we can because we know how hard it is for parents with children struggling with money and stuff."Visitors who sit down on the "worry chair" will be brought tea and biscuits and given the chance to share their concerns "It is a worry chair. And we try and take their worries away. Sometimes it can take a couple of times before they open up and get used to us and we can help them with whatever they are worried about.Mary has found the shop's "worry chair" very useful whilst suffering the confinement she felt during the lockdown"I didn't like the isolation during lockdown," she says. "I just felt sometimes like pulling my hair out, like I was going to explode.
"When we look around us here, we see there is not too much for the children to engage in and these people are young people with energy. If we don't channel it, that energy will go towards vices.
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