Many have left for the Easter holiday early after in-person university assessments were cut and exams moved online
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t The Cricketers pub in the centre of Canterbury, staff had been geared up for lively St Patrick’s Day celebrations. The pub’s “Paddy shots” were on offer: two for £7. Irish music played in the background. But, on Tuesday lunchtime, there were few revellers.
“Normally, as soon as the doors open on St Patrick’s Day, we’re full,” said the manager, Ash Bolonghe, casting his arm around the near-empty pub, with only a handful of matinee theatre-goers sitting by the window for a pre-performance snack. “But not today.”
His bar staff, with masks and sanitiser to hand, had that morning gone to nearby Westgate Hall, one of four venues in the town set up to administer emergency precautionary antibiotics in the midst of the meningitis outbreak, with 11,000 doses said to be available in the town across the sites.
