Lockdown support thanks from fish and chip takeaway
Owner’s gratitude for business from loyal customers
AN INDEPENDENT fish and chip shop has thanked its customers for their support during lockdown – and has urged them to keep buying chips.
Traditional Fish and Chips has been a fixture of West Street, Fareham, for nearly 100 years – opening in 1928.
The business was taken over by Rebecca Traynor, from Fareham, in January 2008.
Rebecca, 49, said: ‘We still get a lot of customers coming in saying that they used to come in 60 years ago to get chips. We are the oldest chip shop in Fareham.’
Rebecca, who used to work for the NHS, said that despite times being tough over the past year due to the pandemic, she is grateful for the support shown by her loyal customers.
She said: ‘We have remained open throughout all the lockdowns and followed all the rules and regulations of the government.
‘Customers can phone or it’s one person in at a time to order their food, they wait outside the shop and are called in when the food is cooked and bagged.
‘The customer collects from the counter because a plastic shield is covering the counter.
‘Anti-bac has always been used in the shop, just used more at the moment, and we started taking card payment from the first lockdown.’
Rebecca works in the shop with Jake Cushing 23, and Freyah Tyrrell, 21, both from Fareham. She only works weekends after taking a step back due to a car accident, but has assistance in the shop from Mike Hurley and Debbie Lamb.
Rebecca said the shop, which is open on reduced hours three hours each evening seven days a week, has been busy, but she urged people to keep showing their support. ‘When we first opened we were the only takeaway at that end of Fareham but now there is a few all wanting trade. We would like to say thank you to all the customers who have supported us though the lockdowns and we can’t wait to welcome back old customers.’
These periods in lockdown have taught us so much about what it means to build an authentic community.
Here at St Francis Church, Leigh Park, we seek to be the ‘heart of the park’. We began on Mother’s Day 2020 by preparing and distributing posies of flowers for whoever was passing by, recognising the qualities of mothering in us all.
As Easter 2020 approached, we arranged for hot cross buns and printed prayer cards to go out with the Easter food parcels from our partners in Foodbank PO9. And we have continued in prayer and active service along with our usual pastoral care, as weeks turned into months.
As Advent arrived and we turned to Christmas, we partnered with the Havant Passion Play team to create the acclaimed Living Advent Calendar, which was filmed in our church hall in a Covid-secure way.
This was a series of daily monologues from characters in the Nativity story everyday for the 26 days leading to Christmas. The monologues are still available on Youtube, just search for HPP – Living Advent Calendar.
It all echoes the Live Pray Serve vision of the Diocese of Portsmouth – which we are part of – as the Church of England in this area aims to grow in depth of discipleship, its impact on society, and in number. Growing in impact involves repurposing our church buildings to serve our communities; and the church being the focal point of those communities. That’s precisely what we are about!
It was a real thrill to receive recognition from our community – the people we stand alongside here in Leigh Park and Warren Park. And it came in an unexpected way.
A bright yellow ‘thank you’ sign appeared outside of St Francis Church bearing the message: ‘Big shout out to St Francis Church for being amazing.’ The full message is pictured.
That’s a fabulous endorsement! To be thanked so publically by our community reminds us and encourages us here at St Francis to continue our work of living, praying and serving alongside our amazing community.
We are backing an industry project to highlight the importance of public notices in local newspapers.
JPIMedia, who publishes this newspaper, has joined forces with other newspaper companies to back the digital portal to be launched to promote public notices to our communities and enhance local democracy.
In the meantime, public notices with key information that has an impact on a specific community can be found in the local newspaper where they are most relevant every week
The digital initiative is being funded through £1 million from the Google News Initiative.
The project will see the creation of a common online portal containing public notices published by regional and local newspapers across the UK.
The importance of public notices will be highlighted on local news websites, harnessing local media’s massive online audiences.
This will improve people’s access to and understanding of important information.
Public notices routinely cover areas such as planning applications, construction, transport links, roadworks, licensing changes and more.
The Online Public Notices Portal will be fully searchable by postcode, type of notice and keyword and, in addition to operating as a standalone site, and will operate within around 800 local news media websites right across the country.
The portal will also deliver notifications to users who have signed up to receive alerts about particular
“Laws which ensure that public notices have to be published in a regional newspaper mean that members of the public have a far greater chance of learning about plans for their town, village or city.
“Public notices contain vital information about planning applications and developments, licensing applications, road closures and much more.
“They are a vital part of the democractic process and we are fully behind plans to make people more aware of the importance of such statutory notices.”
A steering group of local publishers has been tasked with appointing a development partner for the Online Public Notices Portal and overseeing its delivery. The plan will see the launch of the portal in the summer 2021.
But in the meantime, pick up a copy of this newspaper every week to see the public notices which have an impact on your community.
‘Public Notices are a vital part of the democratic process and we are fully behind plans to make people more aware of the importance of such statutory notices.’