Mumsnet during the beginning of the Pandemic - please tell me your stories of the maddest comments you saw

A couple of days before lockdown a woman working in a clothes shop screaming SOCIAL DISTANCING at my bolting toddler

Not so much mad but the stuff that really made my blood boil were the smug posts from people who were either furloughed or didn't have to work wanging on about how wonderful their lives were, skipping through empty forests, growing marrows with their children and face-painting all day and how they had woken up to what a great way this was to live. And how they'd suddenly had this epiphany about how wonderful this life was and would never have to worry about trivial things like making a living or seeing other people.

While I was stuck in a one bedroom flat working (no exaggeration) from 5am to 8.30pm every night just to keep the lights on while also trying to home school my kid in the room next door and keep her off YouTube. And I was one of the relatively lucky ones who a) kept my job and b) didn't have to work in a COVID ward or a germ-infested supermarket.

And the really nauseating thing is how many people have taken this awful fantasy and strung it out for the next five years, still going on to everyone who will listen about how much they enjoy their simple lives without people.

I will murder anyone on sight who has the nerve to tell me they "loved lockdown".

Have all the crazy posters name changed or are they still kicking around? I often think of the "just stop it" nurse who went viral and cringe for her.

I remember the angry thread with the child with SEN who went to the beach.... the poor mum was really stressed out by it all and some of the comments were so nasty.

I worked in an incredibly busy remand prison all through the first two lockdowns, it was very strange. We were all expected to comply with the 2m rule, but the upper landings were less than 1m wide (old Victorian prison). We were constantly edging past each other. Education and workshops were closed, and the men were behind their doors for 22 hours+ every day. Violence was low, self-harm was high, but bizarrely, morale among prisoners and staff was really good.

Yes. I mean, they were definitely weird times, no doubt. But nowhere near as weird as the UK. My DH worked abroad when Denmark decided to close the bridge, and as he was in the air he still didn’t know if the plane could land in Copenhagen (where his car was parked) or if he had to land in Stockholm. It was…stressful.

You are right, there was even more fresh air than usual in nurseries and schools. 😂 We were never healthier than back then!

This really made me laugh. It’s fantastic. Material for a wedding speech or something like that.

Omg, found the story with a bit of a Google

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/parents-criticise-primary-school-crazy-lockdown/

Butter coffee with cinnamon is heavenly. Whisked up. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!

Not on MN but elsewhere on SM... I lost a friend who went absolutely nuts at a friend and I attending a big event at the NEC juuuuuuuuust before lockdown started. Really really unpleasant about it to me, speaking to me as if I were a child, not a woman in my 40s... (but not a hint of that to mutual friend who came with me).

And then well into lockdown, she upped sticks and moved from her perfectly lovely house on the rural edges of a very well serviced suburban area... to a remote rural holiday home the other side of the country with a distinct lack of services... exactly as we were all advised NOT to do.

The utter hypocrisy as well as the constantly patronising, hectoring tone led to me telling her to fuck off.

Omg what an asshole. I don't think I could ever get to the point of laughing about that.

As are Smarties.

I started a thread on here, I was a single parent, 5 dc in the house (and 1 adult dc who came back), 2 with SEN, and had just been diagnosed with cancer and was still wfh with no time or space.

I was having a bit of a moan about being cooped up, didn't have time to get my head around having cancer, was supporting the kids with the news while being bloody scared myself, and everything else to deal with too.

A grandmother came on and told me that I should be grateful, she hadn't seen her grandkids in 3 months and I should simply cherish the time I had in lockdown, with 5 kids, and cancer as she had it worse.

Thankfully half the thread chased her away (everyone else was coming on to moan about their circumstances too, it was quite cathartic).

Her feelings were valid, and I would have sympathised if she started her own thread about missing her grandkid, but to come onto a thread of Mums, lots with health problems and kids with SEN and berate us all for nit appreciating it was a bit much.

There were also tonnes of threads with people who had husbands/friends/ kids/hamsters who had top secret government information and told us all 🤣 I think what they all meant was they saw a post on FB and took it as gospel.

It is still a source of pride for my mother that she interacts with very few people and most of that is done outdoors. She has a bad cold at present and has attributed that to handling some boxes. Reminded me of the washing shopping threads.

I enjoy looking at the photos of what people used in place of face masks. The party hat and the washing up sponge sticks in my mind!

When it became obvious that some of the footage allegedly coming out of China was absolutely fake, that really pissed me off.

My very own arsehole brother sparked a great AIBU and I even rang Jeremy Vine about it!!

We have 4 kids.. I had spent lock down going stir freaking crazy and was DESPERATE for a night out.. my brothers lovely GF offered to babysit when the rule of 6 came in and we could go for a meal... my brother refused to do it as he said when we did the hand over I.e when we left our house and he entered we would be 8 people for about 2 minutes!!!
He refused to babysit on that basis, I can laugh about it now but at the time I needed a night off so so badly and it absolutely broke my heart.

Jeremy Vine found it hilarious my brother wouldn't babysit and said maybe it was a lame excuse as my kids would be too much of a handful?!

What really got to me (for no real good reason, I don't think it was even technically against the rules) was smug conversations with some of my older, retired relatives in the early lockdown days (and there were some similar on here too, and articles in the Torygraph and so on) about how they were going to 'do you young folk a favour' and clear out of the city to spend lockdown in their second homes in tourist areas. My relatives cheerily announced that it was all good, they'd been to the supermarket and packed their camper van to the gunnels with toilet roll and tinned food and wine so they wouldn't have to go the shops again (at a time when there were genuine shortages of many items and people were being urged to only take what they needed 😡) and they'd be off until the end of lockdown. This was in no way a favour to the people left behind in the city who had no choice but to stay and work or look after kids or whatever, it was 100% a jolly for them, it probably if anything overloaded the resources of the small rural places they went to in terms of shopping and traffic on the roads and so on and if they had actually caught COVID would have made things much more difficult than if they'd just stayed put like we were all supposed to. They also got bored very quickly and were back well before the end of lockdown so so much for 'taking themselves out of the way for the duration'.... Grr! Didn't actually hurt me but I guess it's that thing of them acting so noble and self-sacrificing, you went and got pissed in your deckchair in Bognor Geoff, it was hardly the Somme!

@UnstableMonkey Sweden? We were in copenhagen and used to pop over the bridge once able for a bit of sanity - even if it was a coffee 10 feet apart from anyone. The schools reopened pretty quick in Denmark too and even in March a lot of the kids were in coats in playground having lessons and playtime and getting a lot of fresh air.

there were horror stories from Italy, perfectly healthy 20somwthings dropping dead

To be fair, if you look at the statistics, this was extraordinarily rare.

The vast majority of what the media was showing was elderly people.

Same. The looks we got taking out severely disabled child out on walks, and the neighbours tutting through the windows if we went twice in one day. Dark times. This is a child who can't cope with a week long school holiday, and cooped up will self injure (and injure us) to a shocking degree.