Popular NI newsagent closes business due to COVID-19 pandemic - after keeping open every day for 40 years

Ballymena newsagent Eugene Diamond said he had celebrated 40 years in business last August “and during that time the door was never shut”.

Mr Diamond spoke out as he stood in front of his now shuttered Broughshane Street premises in the Co Antrim town.

“The regulations meant we could have stayed open but safeguarding the health and safety of my staff and myself persuaded me it would be wiser to shut,” he said.

“I suffer from diabetes and, at 62, I am in the danger zone of risk from the virus.”

Aside from supplying daily newspapers to his regular customers, Mr Diamond is known as something of a Ballymena institution.

Regularly providing titbits of news to local journalists, he recently delivered a

consignment of Easter eggs to a local care home for the elderly.

Even though his shop is shut, the civic minded Ballymena man keeps in

touch with his clientele.

“I’ve phoned my customers just to let them know they aren’t forgotten.” he said.

“The business is a family concern and people come in to have a chat as well as buy their paper.

“I feel bad that we can’t maintain our service but these are exceptional times. “There has never been anything like this in my lifetime.”

He hopes the effects of living through the current crisis might persuade people to take a different attitude to life.

“Maybe it will change people to be less ‘Me, me, me.” he says.

“They will realise we are only passing through this world for a little

while.”

And like everyone else, he is eagerly waiting an end to these tough

times.

“As soon as we are told it is safe to do so we will open our doors

again and hopefully see all the familiar faces looking for their daily

papers again.” he smiles.

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