Covid-19 September Update

Hello to everyone,

As most of you live in the North East and are now under the new local restrictions that came into force on Friday, I thought I would just write a quick newsletter.

It’s been lovely to see some of you recently and because of that I know there is concern over safety and many had just begun venturing out. I feel that we have to view the recent changes as precautionary in terms of slowing the spread, no matter what we all do to ensure our own safety, as well as observing the regulations to help safeguard others.

I am going to reduce the shop hours slightly with immediate effect, by reverting to Wednesday to Saturday 9 – 5, the with the exception of Thursday when I need to close at 3.30pm to enable me to attend a regular appointment to maintain my own mental health….. albeit via Zoom now.

The online shop will continue to operate as usual. I have been asked quite recently how quickly click and collect orders can be collected? The answer to that is usually within 30 minutes of placing your order. The process is that I am notified by an app that you have placed an order, I attend to it and then tell the app it’s ready, you get an email to tell you it is complete….. so from Wednesday to Saturday Happy Planet is a lot quicker quicker than Amazon.

If there is a move back to a lockdown I will bring the regular newsletter back with ideas and links to information. Prior to lockdown I had been running a small informal creative group, which had to cease. I have been giving that some thought to setting up as a creative group on Facebook, where links could be placed by others and we could share ideas, triumphs and disasters. I may even set some fun challenges. I will pop a link in the next newsletter, although if you already follow Happy Planet on Facebook you will no doubt see it happen in the coming week. Don’t be shy, it’s not about perfection, it’s about fun and building an online community you can dip into when you need a lift or an idea.

I only have two links for this hurried edition. The first one is to the North Tyneside site which holds all the relevant information regarding the new local guidelines, which can be found here
https://my.northtyneside.gov.uk/category/1429/coronavirus-covid-19

I understand that there are widespread concerns regarding childcare, especially by grandparents and family members, as the new regulations mean that this is not allowable. There is a petition to address this and ask for this matter to be reconsidered by the Government. If you wish to know more about it and perhaps sign it you can find it here https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-allow-informal-childcare-arrangements-to-continue-during-north-east-lockdown?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_24755416_en-GB%3A4&recruited_by_id=0c4ebb10-fa52-11ea-aee1-e788f0080e40&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&use_react=false

If you have any questions or burning requests for the creative group drop me an email.

Take care & Stay safe

Gail Curry

Artist