Penarth Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We will be profiling some of these businesses and organisations in a feature called 'Up Close in Penarth'.

Today we caught up with two of Penarth's osteopathic practices as they emerge from lockdown.

"It's obviously been great to see the media in Penarth covering how all these small restaurants and cafes are coping with COVID," says Osteopath David Langdon as we sit in his Glebe Street clinic. "But there's an awful lot of businesses like mine that have struggled along unseen. I just want people to know that we're still here and doing all we can."

It has been a volatile 18 months for David and his practice. He moved to Penarth from London last April (2019) to be closer to his Penarthian parents, leaving an established practice for a new town and patient-base.

"Starting from scratch isn't easy - you have to find a whole new clientele but my partner and I decided we could do that.

"I gradually built the business up. Penarth is great for word-of-mouth so I was able to steadily grow it throughout last year and by December we were really happy with where we were."

January is an infamously dry month for osteopaths. People are a little strapped for cash and perhaps still feeling to groggy after Christmas to be picking up many sporting injuries. But by February and March things tend to pick up again.

Not this year.

As most small businesses will attest, March was an incredibly uncertain time, and osteopaths were left more confused than most. The government deemed them key workers, meaning their practices could legally remain open, but their governing body - and sensibilities - said otherwise. Most across the country closed for all but urgent appointments.

"I was in this funny situation whereby although I could continue to work because we are classified as crucial workers by the government, I didn't want to pass anything on to my elderly parents," says David.

"Also, the advice we were getting from authorities was so mixed we didn't know what to do. We didn't know how to get PPE, what to wear, how to operate - so I thought I should take a while to let things settle down."

For a relatively small town, Penarth boasts a high concentration of osteopathic clinics. Competing with David is the Penarth Osteopathic Practice, run by husband and wife Jon and Pippa Slack.

For Pippa, professional hardships have been overshadowed and placed into perspective by a personal tragedy.

"I lost my mother to COVID," she says. "She was taken to hospital in early May after having had a suspected stroke and she picked it up in hospital. So it's obviously been a really tough time."

"At the beginning, we were also unsure what we were going to do financially. We followed our governing body's advice and ultimately closed for three months. After building up a large patient base, we initially thought we might have lost everything."

Pippa thanks the government for seeing her business through the crisis.

"The self-employed payments and £10,000 government grant really helped us through lockdown.

"Thankfully, we're back now and we seem more popular than ever."

Popular, but not unchanged. Pippa's working environment has been altered immeasurably by the social distancing measures she and her husband have implemented to keep their patients safe.

"We won't treat anyone who's unwell - we check their temperature as they come in. We also use individual hand towels because hand dryers have been shown to spread germs and paper towels are quite wasteful, so we think this is the best way to go about it. We also leave half an hour between every appointment so we can thoroughly clean the clinic.

"People feel really reassured. We've had some really great reviews of people saying how reassured they've felt.

"It feels great to be back helping others after everything that went on at home. We'll get there. You have to take the positive memories and then try to move on with your life - which is what we're doing"

Back in David's practice, social distancing measures are just as prevalent.

"So we do remote case histories now to reduce face-to-face time. Then we get people to sterilise their hands. I wear a mask and an apron. I ask patients to bring in their own towels and then to disinfect their hands again on the way out. So it's a pretty low risk environment that is deep cleaned regularly."

"The thing is I can't treat people virtually - it is a (literally) hands on profession. The public confidence of people to come back is low. So we just have to reassure people that we're doing all we can to keep them safe."

"But the main problem is I don't think everyone understands that chiropractors and therapists have reopened. I want people to know that we're back and raring to go."