Nub News aims to be supportive to EVERY element of the community from business and shops to people and charities and clubs and sports organisations.

Everyone is finding it tough at the moment and wants life to get back to normal.

We will be profiling some of these local businesses and groups regularly over coming weeks in our UP CLOSE IN BURNHAM AND DENGIE features in the hope that we can be a supportive springboard for your full return to life and business as usual.

Today we feature an interview with John Lord, owner of Burnham-on-Crouch's Jolly Fryer fish and chip shop, who tells how pleased he is to be back at the heart of the local community.

John Lord's joy at being able to open his Burnham-on-Crouch fish and chip shops again is obvious.

"Walking along the High Street and the Quay on Monday was lovely – it was like seeing the town come back to life again," he says, "with the shops opening again and people about. It's been a long time."

John is very aware of how hard this last lockdown will have been for many members of the community, including his customers at The Jolly Fryer. He explains how in normal times he and partner, Liz Dean, are something of a double act for all the regulars who come in and, just as with so many other types of town centre businesses, an element of their place in the community is to provide somewhere to find a listening ear.

John, who has run fish and chip shops for more than 30 years and has been in Burnham for six years, recalls an incident when he had a shop in Great Yarmouth some years ago.

"There was an old man who would come into the shop at midday every Friday. On one particular Friday, he didn't come in," John says, "I couldn't leave it, so I rang the local police. They found him in Lowestoft looking for a car he didn't have.

"He had dementia and he didn't live very long after that. I went to the funeral and there were six of us there – the other five were family and they were so pleased I was there."

Even now, John is clearly emotional as he talks about this and it is easy to see that he is a man who likes people and his place in the town. That sense of community was important to him again in lockdown.

"The community and the spirit in this town is unbelievable," John says, "we lost a couple of great characters in the town in this pandemic, but everyone here has supported each other."

So it was that when John learned that a young couple in the town, Paige and Sam, had suffered the loss of their baby girl, Penelope Mae Connelly, at just five days old from a rare condition called Galen Malformation (which affects the veins in the brain), he decided to help them in their bid to raise money in her memory for Great Ormond Street, where she was cared for in the days before she passed away on March 19. The family is hugely thankful for the kindness and care that Penelope and they received at such a tragic time. Anyone who would like to donate can find the family's Go Fund Me page using the link here.

John and Liz are donating 10 per cent of the shop's takings from 11 April to 16 April to the fund and have donation tins in the shop. Liz lost a baby boy herself when he was just six days old and understands their loss.

"We really wanted to show our support," John says, "it's so important for them to know the community is behind them and they've already raised thousands of pounds."

Looking to the future, John is looking forward most of all to the day when he can have customers crowding back in his shop once again – rather than one at a time, as it is now.

And he is as passionate as ever about what he does, sticking to traditional methods, preparing the food in-house and using beef dripping as he believes it's what his customers want.

"Quality is the important thing," John says, "I would never want to serve my customers anything other than the best. We once had potatoes come in that weren't as they should be and I closed the shop for the day. I'd rather lose business for the day than lose the custom.

"It's what we do best and what matters to us most."

You can find The Jolly Fryer's regularly updated Facebook page using the link here.