With the details of the ‘roadmap out of lockdown’ revealed yesterday by the prime minister, non-essential retail has been given the chance to start planning its reopening.

Non-essential retailers can reopen during the second stage of restriction easing, which will happen no earlier than April 12th.

Retailers which don’t sell ‘essential’ items have been closed since January 4th, and were only able to open sporadically throughout last year.

If the data let’s stage two go ahead on its planned date, then the high street should once again come to life on Monday April 12th.

Gerald England / Geograph

That includes Primark, who has now confirmed that it will be opening stores on April 12th if the government allows it.

A Primark spokesperson told The Sun: “Primark welcomes the news that we have a provisional opening date of April 12th for our stores in England.

“We know our customers will be thrilled and we can’t wait to welcome them back into our stores.

“Our priority will be to do that safely, building on all the lessons we have learnt across our European operations in the past year.”

Joining Primark in reopening on the 12th will be John Lewis, Dunelm, H&M and JD Sport, who all plan to let customers enter stores on the first day it is allowed.

A mental health nurse and his daughter developed a family-friendly fantasy game to have a fun break from homeschooling, and the product is now worth £125,000.

Eight-year-old Cora Hughes and dad, Dan from Huddersfield first began developing the game at the start of Covid back in spring 2020, at the kitchen table between home school lessons. 

CoraQuest is a family-friendly dungeon game that sees heroes fight their way through quests, rescuing people and collecting treasures along the way. It features the likes of Wizard Woman, Crossbow Dude, Sword Girl, as well as a host of grumpy goblins, gremlins and orcs. 

Dan shared the game on Facebook and eventually Gary King, a professional artist, got involved, colouring the pictures that Cora drew.

The post gathered big support and children added their own drawings, making Dan realise it could be a game others could enjoy. 

Dan told Yorkshire Live: “Within weeks the project snowballed.

“Videos and play-testing happened online and over twenty kids from Britain, the USA, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Australia contributed artwork which has now been made into gorgeous looking prototypes.

“When the game launched on Kickstarter on February 1st, it unexpectedly smashed through its £12,060 target in 45 minutes and has gone from strength to strength.

“Now Cora and I are now looking forward to getting the game manufactured later this year.”

Cora said: “Dad got bored of learning about the Romans every day, so we did something different.

“We wanted to make a dungeon crawling game we could both enjoy. And then we realised that it was actually really good so we started to make it into a real board game.

“We really want it to be a fun thing for families to be part of creating themselves, so we’ve set it up so you can create your own characters and artwork, or you can play with ours straight out of the box.”

Dan added: “It all just started as a bit of a fun home learning project- some creative writing, a bit about probability with dice rolls, lots of art and a bit of IT.

“A friend, Gary King, made a joke box cover on Facebook in August and since then the whole thing has just gathered pace with loads of people jumping in wanting to be part of it. 

“As we began receiving kids’ drawings of monsters and putting them up on our gallery, they were just so adorable.

“I’m not a soppy man, but to feel the support and enthusiasm of the community supporting us in this very special way, my heart is pretty much exploding.”

The pair are super excited about the opportunities creating CoraQuest will bring.

Cora said: “I can’t believe it! It’s amazing. I can’t believe so many people want to play our game.”

Many Aldi stores are hiring across Greater Manchester, with some jobs offering salaries of £47k.

Aldi is looking for people of all levels of experience to join the team and work for the UK’s joint cheapest supermarket. 

There’s a huge range of jobs on offer, from caretakers and cleaners to store managers and plenty in between.

The Manchester Arndale, Ancoats, Fallowfield and Salford stores are just some of the sites looking for new store assistants 

While Gorton, Clayton, Stretford and Eccles among others are looking for caretakers/cleaners with wages of £9.50/hour.

Gorton, Stretford and Clayton are looking for deputy managers with wages ranging between £10.55-£11.57 per hour. 

Aldi is also looking for graduates who want to start their careers in retail management, or for those people looking to start a brand new career path.

Management recruits go through extensive training and will manage and maintain their branch once qualified.

Store Managers will earn a starting salary of £47,080, while Assistant Store Managers will earn £32,830.

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