By Nick Morrison

This Friday, 20th of March,  saw the first over 70s hour at Tesco in Kirkwall.  It was from 09.00 to 10.00, Andy Tennant, the manager I spoke to said it had all gone quite well for a first attempt. Certainly there was a high proportion of us oldies, I am one of those!

The basic idea is that the over 70s are especially vulnerable to Covid 19 and under 70s are asked to shop at another time so as to give “public distancing” of two meters minimum a chance to work. In some countries there are lines on the floor a meter apart at the checkouts and shops are limiting the actual number of people in the shop. My daughter had to queue for an half an hour to get into her local Lidl in Portugal.

Tesco has taken this move in conjunction with Asda and Sainsbury’s in the sooth.

Andy asked me to thank his staff for the work they are doing under these circumstances and lets face it they ARE front line essential workers. He also asked the general public to respect this hour and any others that may be introduced in the future.

They have put a cleaning station at the entrance to the store to clean your hands and the handles of the trolley, good thinking Batman! Many people were availing themselves of this facility whilst I was there.