THE double-whammy this week of our city pubs being allowed to reopen and Oxford United having not one but two major events is a massive win for the city.

As if people wouldn’t be enthusiastic enough anyway to get back to the pub, now we have two extra reasons to go down, support our players and support our local businesses.

Hopefully, so long as everyone behaves themselves, it will be a fantastic way to restart normal life.

However, it is just a start, and the hard times are far from over.

All hospitality businesses – pubs, hotels and restaurants – have struggled over the past year, and even if things went completely back to normal this week there would still be a hell of a lot of catching up to do right now.

But things are not even back to normal yet: all businesses are forced to stick to table service for the time being, meaning they will have fewer customers and need to dedicated more of their staff’s time to serving people.

What’s more, the final light at the end of the tunnel – the June 21 lifting of all remaining restrictions across the country – has now had a massive shadow cast over it by the rise of cases of the so-called Indian variant of the coronavirus, with the Prime Minister now indicating that this could make him reconsider the roadmap out of lockdown.

All of this means that it may be some time yet before we can have a properly 'normal' experience at a pub, restaurant or any number of businesses.

It could potentially put some people off altogether.

We urge all of our readers, and everyone across the whole of Oxfordshire, to get out and support their local businesses.

Do it for yourselves, to give yourself a treat after this year from hell, but do it for them as well: we are very much not out of the woods yet and trading over this summer will make a huge difference .

This week will be a great start, so let's make sure it's not the end.