What we're the most bizarre/memorable moments of the pandemic for you?

[Jaggerdagger]

Just wondering what they are for you?

I'll start. One of mine was seeing a children's playground cordoned off with tape, including all the park benches.

Landing at Gatwick at the start of the pandemic, seeing Boris making the announcement that you have to stay at home on tv, hearing that new word Furlough - having to look up what it meant. Driving home on M25 with no traffic.

images.app.goo.gl/qGGDUurJ1mGHPKUTA

Seeing these posters around Hackney when I was at work

Voluntarily stating at home for 14 days because we had ‘symptoms’ of covid (pre-testing days). Madness. If someone told me 5 yrs ago I would do this I’d have laughed.

Appreciate this is nothing compared to what others have gone / are going through

While lots of this seems over the top and draconian in retrospect, we should remember that the original virus produced more severe symptoms than the omicron one we have now, we had no vaccines, and people, especially older people were dying in their thousands. And also, we still had no idea what we were really dealing with or how to contain it. This, in the UK and Europe and America at least, had never happened in our lifetime and our emergency services swung into action knowing they might get sick themselves. I knew a paramedic who caught it from a patient and subsequently died from it early on, and that was scary and sobering. If it happens again I’d like to think we would be much better prepared and protected.

And my 4 yr old son noticing an aeroplane in the sky when flights resumed and asking me what it was…we live near Manchester airport.

I’ve just remembered going to pick up my elderly dad who lived 2 hours away. We weren’t going to leave him alone and kept going to get him for a long weekend every four weeks.

He lived in a cul de sac for over 55s.

There would be other residents banging on their windows like caged animals, screaming that we couldn’t take him, they were calling 999, we would kill him - I also posted about it on mumsnet and was told here that I was risking his life.

He was “told on” to his gP who called him and told him if he didn’t stay inside he would die (those words). My dad told him to mind his own business.

My dad couldn’t have cared less about covid. He was out and about everyday to the shops. He said at 85, how much longer did people want him to live anyway?

He’s in a care home now. He was diagnosed with vascular dementia last year and it’s progression has been rapid.

What a waste his last heathy year would have been sat inside all alone.

And actually, in his lucid moments, he tells me he wishes he did die of covid because he saw his sister in law succumb to dementia and he knows the slow death he has to come.

Watching older people in a local village standing and talking to each other but staying 2 metres apart. Following the rules where we live but still talking to each other.

Watching a young woman jump out of one car in a car park and jump into a car with a young man and both cars then sped off. I don't think they were following the rules!

I saw an elderly person doing laps of their very short balcony during the first lockdown

Obv compared to being in Ukraine it seems like most of it was not actually that bad in some respects but I do remember some key things.

Definitely the headlines that schools would be closed "indefinitely" - what an awful word felt absolutely chilling. Collecting the kids that last day, seeing them playing together in the playground and knowing it would be the last time, and they didn't even know it. Later going in to school in July to collect sons books and seeing the last page dated 23rd March or whatever it was and then nothing but blank pages for the rest of the book.

That Friday when the pubs kicked people out and there was an enormous queue at the off licence. People dancing around each other trying to socially distance for the first time in shops.

In late February 2020 I was with my friend driving past Aldi and when I looked through the window,2 women were wearing face masks,it just looked so bizarre and frightening to me as someone with health anxiety and I had to stop myself going into panic mode.
Walking my (then) new puppy the day after lockdown was announced and not seeing a single soul, not even a car on our way to the park.

Another thing that really threw me, particularly on MN, was how many did a complete 180 with regards to mental health. Up to that point, mental health was fragile and sacred, you should do everything to preserve it, and then suddenly it was ‘who gives a shit if you are cooped up in a small flat, with only your shadow to talk to. If you go outside someone will die’

Moving house on March 20th and nipping into the new local whilst the vans unloaded. There was such a strange, somber atmosphere, everyone in there sat with this kind of tense anticipation...
Mid-pint the announcement was made that all bars and restaurants were closing. We went back to our new home and barely left for months on end.

Sitting at our dining table dressed in black and dialing into two funeral services at the same crematorium within weeks of each other. The two people were unrelated/didn't know each other, and the crematorium was miles away in a rural part of the country. It felt very surreal.

I was walking along the main high street here during lockdown and two men (in their 30s, so grown adults) were walking toward me, side by side. I stepped aside slightly to let them pass and the one closest to me slowed down, leaned in really close and snarled ‘scared you’re going to catch something, you fat cunt?’ at me.

Reading an email sent round at work (NHS) warning is not to wear our lanyards in public as there were reports of staff being mugged for them so people could use them to claim keyworker status.

@LoHicimosAmigos

Noticing that people had stopped making eye contact.

Yes and I noticed I did this and stopped smiling at people.

The whole thing has totally changed me. I don't make effort to go out or to meet people anymore. Quite sad really.

One Single moment...
Trump suggesting folk inject bleach

• the looks on everyone's faces in the room
• Fauci rushing to podium to say "Do NOT do that!"

Going to an airport for a PCR in summer 2020. Never thought I'd be doing that.

Most bizarre was the hike in toilet roll sales

Being able to visit Project Wingman in quiet moments in the hospital where we would be served free drinks and sometimes eats by wonderful furloughed/redundant air crew and pilots in their unifom.
Thank you so much, Wingman people! You were VERY appreciated and we were gutted when you had to leave. You helped us NHS staff by giving a little bit of brightness in the gloom.

Being admitted to hospital for 13 days with no visitors and unable to see my mum, OH and children (including my son who has a LD), while the media reported on Cummings going to Barnard Castle 'to test his eye sight'.

My OH brought me fresh towels and pjs every 2 days and waited while they gave him a bag of washing for me. When I was able to get out of bed, I waved from the window one day - I cried my eyes out, as did my daughter who was with him.

I was on a Covid-free ward and the staff were amazing. Another lady in the bed next to me was in for 10 days during my stay. Without her and the staff, I'd have lost my mind!

I had Sepsis and went to A&E on the advice of my GP who spoke to me on the phone. MY OH took me to the hospital but it didn't occur to me at the time (because I wasn't with it) that they wouldn't let him in. While I was in the waiting area, I started to feel like I was sitting next to myself and felt my consciousness waning. It was a horrible feeling. I deteriorated quickly, and it must have been awful for my OH.

Since I came home the NHS has continued to be absolutely amazing. They have cared for me fabulously. I'm so grateful!

The poor students locked in halls. I'd insist any of mine stayed in shared houses during their uni years after that. It was absolutely horrifying.

The most surreal moment for me was before lockdown. I knew things were serious but I perhaps was not taking it too seriously at the time (if that makes sense) but I drove through our village and saw an old man outside a shop in a full on gas mask. It was terrifying.

I walked miles every day with my 9 month old in the pram, the roads were absolutely dead and any person I saw I'd cross the road to get away from! Bonkers!

Having the police come and talk to DH, the kids and me as someone had reported us - they asked us not to play on the beach in our dinghy. We explained we were exercising from home, pointed out our house, the police agreed that we therefore weren't breaking the law but asked that we stop doing it anyway 'because it will make other people want to do it'...

In order to get to us to tell us this, they walked past several groups of people having parties on the beach, BBQs etc, clearly breaking lockdown as it was during a time when you could only excercise from home and only with people from your own household. They ignored all of those people.