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.

Driving on the M25 on a weekday and it being almost deserted.

A woman with her children walking into the road in front of a car to avoid passing me on the pavement.

@Pugsbladder

A woman leaping into a bush when she saw me coming in the opposite direction.

😂 It think this was my MIL

Queuing to get out of the woods during the first lockdown when all there was to do was go for a walk or queue at the supermarket. I've been a regular walker for years and suddenly there were all these people cluttering up woodland that was previously mostly deserted.

Plus all the batshittery made up rules that people were adamant were the law that must not be broken, such as:

You were only allowed to go out for one hour of exercise a day. If your (compulsory, they seemed to believe) daily walk lasted one hour and five minutes then you were breaking the law and grannies would die.

You were only allowed to go to the nearest supermarket, only once a week and only buy essentials when you got there.

If you went to the second nearest supermarket, because it was cheaper or you preferred their offering, then you were breaking the law and grannies would die. Likewise if you went more than once a week or bought something that one of the crazies on the internet deemed non essential, then you were breaking the law and grannies would die.

Then not forgetting those who deemed it necessary to wash, quarantine or freeze their shopping, parcels, post and anything from the dirty outside world that entered their home lest it bring in covid because 'someone could have licked, coughed or sneezed all over it'.

The M6 being almost empty. It was creepy.

Being told seriously by my neighbour that I should have left my 7&8yos at home when I went to the supermarket. Or do what she did... go when they were in keyworker school... (she was part time, kids went to school full time...)

Another neighbour apologising as her two yo ran up to me and gave me a hug. We agreed he was exempt from social distancing!

Good grief @Frenchie8690. You clearly survived but I wonder how.

Going for a walk with DS the first week on online schooling. Looking at the lack of planes in the sky and explaining to him Covid was going to be in the history books.

@Weekendtobegin

A police officer on the news telling a family to get out of their own front garden and inside the house. Because Covid doesn't stop at your front gate.

Similarly a young woman being restrained assaulted by police because she had been released from hospital and went to stay with her parents so they could look after her. Apparently that wasn't allowed. That video was extremely distressing.

And meeting in a cold car park last Easter so my parents could give DDs Christmas presents in person...

Sitting on a bench with my granddaughter and realising she had shorts on so I used hand sanitiser on her legs. It seems ridiculous now but it was very early on and the idea that it could be caught from any surface was still there, see also wiping or quarantining shopping.

Crossing roads to avoid people, or, if you couldn't do that, turning with your back to them.

Driving 25 miles to help my 80 year old mum with an IT issue - at a time when we were not meant to travel outwith our own local authority area - but I deemed it a vital service.

She wiped down her iPad, put it in a plastic bag and passed it through a window, where I then fixed it, wiped it down and passed it back in.

Surreal now, surreal then.

Before schools closed, being in Lidl and 2 people arguing over the last box of Cheerios. A women looked at me and mouthed 'the world has gone mad'

Going for a walk during the first lockdown with my dd and we saw 1 car and absolutely no body around. It felt like 28 days later!

One nice memory is going on our daily walk (me, dd and ds) and counting how many rainbows we could see if people's windows.

Rainbows sodding everywhere. Empty roads.

Taking wipes on walks in the countryside to wipe down fences, stiles or anything other people might have touched.
We lost our minds.

Being given a piece of paper signed by my chief exec outlining why I had permission to be out.
Carrying it in my car while driving through deserted roads on my way to work.

That note on the passenger seat and the completely empty streets, sobbing, not wanting to go, not knowing what the day will bring.

Horrific and bizarre.

Oh, and the way that the general population was so completely unable to understand even the basics of risk assessment and protection measures when applied to a population.

As someone who has spent decades helping people work safely with a workplace hazard that has a very small risk of causing a terrible outcome, much of the advice that was about reducing contact (eliminating non essential contact, distancing, rule of 6 etc) were pretty obvious and made perfect sense to me, because when you reduce the small risk as much as possible for millions of people, the measures can significantly reduce the likelihood of the bad outcome.

But there was just the endless 'I'm a till operator in the supermarket and if it's safe for me to go to work then it's safe for you to go to work in an office' type posts because people were missing the very obvious point that there was a benefit of a supermarket worker being in their workplace that simply wasn't there for the office worker who could do their job just as well from home, plus there was the knock on benefit of reducing the number of people using public transport, which made it less crowded and therefore less risky for the people who did need to use it.

Probably all the melodramatic twats on here saying if you left the house to get pretty much anything other than emergency medication you should be done for attempted murder 🤣

Shouting to DS, “Quick, into the road. There’s a person coming!” Rather than, “Quick, out of the road, there’s a car coming!”.

stop start shopping in tesco,
being annoyed at husband and wife saying We dont actually need anything!
driving to my dm to give her her shopping on empty roads,
picking up dd1 from the train late at night being worried that i wouldnt be allowed
picking up dd2 from the train with so many of her belongings on her back
the dreadful feeling of fear and anxiety

Driving from work in the evening and seeing nobody on the streets, not even dog walkers as they have already had their fictional hour earlier. Carrying a letter to show to the police that confirmed I was an essential worker after several colleagues were challenged for being out during lock down.

Going to Morrisons the day before they announced lockdown and seeing people wearing washing up gloves, scarves wrapped round their mouths, welders masks, anything they had at home.

Everyone queuing at the vaccination centre. All of that felt like a film for me.

The one that really stands out was in 2020 the children who couldn’t graduate from primary school as it was closed. The principal stuck a big rainbow wooden sign on the school gate wishing them all well. And when you got closer you could see loads of signatures from children saying ‘goodbye’ they had obviously all signed it when out for a walk. I felt so sorry for them all.

The strangest moment for me was in lockdown 1 right at the beginning in Sainsburys searching for baby wipes (had twins still in nappies). I found a single pack, and a woman had picked up a box just before I got to them. I felt such a rage, and like I would fight her for these wipes. It was utterly bizarre, I’m normally a chicken, but in that moment I understood how brawls start during Black Friday events and such like.

Anyway, we got chatting in a socially distanced way, she wanted my wipes and I wanted hers so we swapped. But I was shocked at my feelings, and still am thinking about it now!

a fairly local park absolutely crammed with people,