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On April 12, stage two of England’s road map out of Covid lockdown was enacted and a vast chunk of its economy blew off the cobwebs and reopened to an expectant public.
Pubs, restaurants and cafes were allowed to resume outside service and non-essential retail shops and gyms welcomed back patrons, albeit with Covid-secure protocols in place.
Nowhere in England is there a denser concentration of retail, hospitality and leisure establishments than its capital city.
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Back on a Saturday in February, before the road map had begun, and when schoolchildren were still learning from home,
The National sent photographer Rob Greig on to London’s desolate streets to take a snapshot of the city in lockdown.
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Picking the UK as the first country outside the Gulf to expand his online flower delivery business was a natural step for Kuwaiti entrepreneur Abdulaziz Al Loughani.
First set up in 2017, Floward has grown into a $30 million (£21.64m) business with its annualised revenue soaring 1,400 per cent between January 2020 and 2021 - when the rest of the world was grappling with the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic - and its transactions surging 1,200 per cent.
Mr Al Loughani, who spent a year of his high school education in London and completed his MBA in the city, expanded his venture to the UK in November last year after spotting the potential the market offered his business.