A Watford Observer reader won a competition designed to help people stay connected with loved ones during the pandemic.

With restrictions still in place, The Watford Observer ran a ‘Keeping You Connected’ competition in January, where the winner would scoop a new Samsung mobile phone and Fire HD tablet.

Patrick Turner, from Abbots Langley and a lifelong Watford FC fan, said he was delighted to find out he won.

The competition required people to send in four different front-page mastheads of the Watford Observer, and as a regular buyer and a man bored in lockdown – he decided to take his chances.

“I do rely on the internet a lot for emails and communications with different groups. It’s useful for that,” the winner said.

For Mr Turner, communication was increasingly important to stay in touch with his now grown-up children – some of whom live near Watford, but one living in Leicestershire.

While he was able to occasionally see his local children from his doorstep over lockdown, he barely had a chance to physically meet his family living in Leicestershire.

This meant that over the past year, Mr Turner spent a lot of time away from his seven grandchildren who range from the ages of nearly two-years-old to seven.

Fortunately, the family adapted to regular zoom meetings and quiz to stay in touch and keep connected.

He said: “You never heard of Zoom twelve months ago, and now it’s the main way to keep in touch and you use it all the time.”

And while the family have stayed connected digitally, lockdown has meant that they missed out on many memorable moments of the youngest grandchild – nearly two-years-old .

He said: “The very youngest one, we saw him back in September and he wasn’t walking. But now he’s walking and running around- it’s a whole stage we’ve missed out on.

“Now we’re starting to make arrangements to see the youngest one, his second birthday is coming up in April, so even if it’s us sitting in the garden it’d be nice to see him.”

Mr Turner, a member of the University of the Third Age (U3A), was able to stay connected with other retired people in his local group through Zoom and online networks.

The new devices he won will help him connect to these members even faster than before.

Talking about the importance of needing digital devices over lockdown, he said: “I don’t know how we would have got through this without the communication age we have now.

“If we hadn’t had that, we would have just lost contact with everybody.”

And while Mr Turner was surprised to see he won the competition, considering he barely partakes in them, luck must run in the family as his eldest son had previously won a Watford Observer competition nearly thirty years ago at the age of ten.