Money makes the world go round

It feels a little like the world has stopped going round at the moment.

We are all still at home only going out for exercise, to shop for necessities or for medical emergencies, or to work if we can't stay at home. All non essential shops and public spaces, libraries, indoor and outdoor leisure facilities, hotels, hostels, campsites etc etc are still closed.

There is, however, one shop that has opened its doors during the pandemic: Ferdy and Gil's Food Shop.

Gil's favourite books at the moment are the Alfie and Annie Rose books, hence this new enterprise was inspired by Alfie's garden grocery store.

The Chief Shopkeeper (Ferdy) was sent on a few training courses to learn about money before the shop could open: he had to learn what each coin and note were, plus how to add them together and how to give change.

tl-bl clockwise: Alfie and Annie Rose's shop; writing prices using coins;
writing down and adding up what Mum has ordered; learning about money and prices.

After he had gained his certificate in shopkeeping, the shop opened.

I have visited the shop myself a few times and have been impressed by the amount of food in stock, not to mention the very reasonable prices; sometimes I even left the shop with more money than I'd had when I went in!

The Assistant Shopkeeper also found a singular way to maintain social distancing.

Later that week, when counting up his profits, the Chief Shopkeeper worked out that he could afford: a trip to the Asterix theme park (£37.50); a toy green lantern (£7.35); a toy skunk (£7.50); a Magnum ice cream (£2), a toy frog (£3.39) and a trip to the cinema to see Trolls (£15.99).

Both shopkeepers have confessed that they are pretty happy with the lockdown measures as it means that they get to play lots of lego and go to bed late, but they would welcome an easing of restrictions on public gatherings, and to travel abroad so that they could visit the cinema, and take a trip to France to meet Asterix.