And …. Pause

Coronavirus & our wonderful salon & staff

by Lisa Young

Studio 8 Beauty Salon Owner

Wow! What a tough few weeks we have all just been through and we are not through it yet !

For anyone who doesn’t know what is happening … and let’s face it unless you are Snow White and been in a deep sleep and have just been awoken by Prince Charming kissing you …. Then we all know that C word … COVID-19, Coronavirus is what’s happening!

Where can I begin ?

We all knew what was happening in China but never in a million years would we have thought that Coronavirus would come to us here and impact us so badly.

Once it came to Italy and we saw those poor people suffering in overfilled and struggling hospitals followed by the enforced lockdown intended to slow down the accelerated infection rates and the demand for intensive care hospital care we started to wake up to the reality it was going to come to us next.

And so it did …

Across the world people are contracting the Coronavirus infection. People are dying! Viruses are like parasites and they love to live off other living beings and in this case it’s us!

It doesn’t differentiate between hot or cold climates it just likes all of us but especially those that have underlying medical conditions!

At first they did not know how it was spreading. It’s a new virus you see and we all thought that if we kept our hands clean, our work surfaces clean and practised good hygiene we’d be safe. But this one is different. It spreads fast and it spreads through coming in close proximity of others.

A single cough or sneeze can spread droplets that contaminate surfaces at least a metre, which is why we are advised to stand 2 metres away from others.

But it’s what we touch and especially because we are genetically programmed to touch our face, nose or eyes and it’s this that gives this awful parasite an opportunity to infect us.

Those that have underlying medical conditions are dying because their immune systems cannot cope with the Coronavirus and so their internal organs start to slow down. This infection is so bad they dying alone and their loved ones cannot be with them at the end because the risk of spreading is so high. Imagine if that was you or your loved one?

And so here we are now ….

We know that this is an extremely worrying time for the entire world and keeping our friends, family, neighbours & even people you do not know safe should always be everyone’s number 1st priority.

Our Services & NHS were already stretched and adding this nightmare to their workload is making things impossible as they work tirelessly to help those in need and they need our support even more!

With great sadness we closed our business last week because it became so clear that social distancing and self-isolation was the only solution and even with all the infection controls we could possibly put into practice on top of our strict existing practices we could not control this infection and do our jobs safely.

Our staff that were devastated that they were going to have to say goodbye to our amazing Clients and stop doing what they love most for a little while until this passes and we can control new cases.

Yes it’s going to be hard for us but we must all do our part. Yes we need clients for our business to operate but no amount of money could replace a human being, a loved one , a son or daughter, a nan or grandad …. and we cannot put our NHS under so much pressure just because we did not do the right thing.

We are determined to be back …

We are not insured for business interruption caused by Coronavirus, so without the amazing help from the government we could have been financially ruined and would have needed to have closed our business for good. But we can’t do that to our amazing staff and so we will be staying at home as instructed and keeping everyone safe and working hard on a business recovery plan so we can save our staff’s jobs and see our amazing clients again.

So please be patient with us whilst we “Pause” our business and prepare to return inspired, rejuvenated and refreshed and we will see you on the other side of this coronavirus crisis.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE …

We need this to be under control so lives can be saved, the NHS does not break under the pressure and people do not die.

No one should be working in the hair & beauty industry as we cannot adhere to the social distancing rules so unfortunately we are unable to make home visits. This risks cross infection between households so please ensure that you do not have visitors from other households and that you are following the rules and keeping everyone including yourselves safe.

Take care, be safe & we hope to see you as soon as it is safe to do so.

Lisa & The Studio 8 Beauty Team xxx