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 to work for a shift in A&E right at the beginning. It was a Sunday morning. A village near us had put up NHS flags and bunting. The roads were eerily quiet.
Knowing what I was going into made that little bit better.

I will never forget walking into Sainsburys and there was no food.
The look on everyone’s faces was heartbreaking.
Still makes me tear up thinking about it now!

I have read all of these on and off all day. My heart goes out to all of you.

Mine to add

Trying to work in the dining room whilst caring for a 3 year old who couldn't comprehend what was going on. I would get up some days to start work at 6:30am and do as many hours as I could before DH went to work (supermarket supervisor), so that my work wouldn't suffer as much, or waiting for DH to get home and working till late at night. On DH's weekday off I would work 11/12 hours to make up for the rest of the week.

Having to leave work meetings as DS needed a poo.

Saying goodbye to FIL in Oct 2020 over a timed video call, just before they turned off his oxygen. We had 5 mins to talk to him. He died of covid an hour later, just as DH had walked into work. He still worked his full shift.

Going out on your daily exercise - usually consisted of taking the children for a 1 hour scoot or walk! Yet any person that approached you would move out the way or cross the road!

The one thing I miss from lockdown is spending time with my family and not rushing everywhere - it was nice for a short while I admit. Sometimes now I've forgotten what things used to be like? And often get that 'oh best not just in case of covid' if we have things planned that we don't want rearranged or cancelled!

In saying all of this currently got covid now ..

Not as dramatic as some of these but the two that stand out were

Going for an MRI scan on Friday 20 March 2020 at a clinic in West London, probably one of the last days anyone was able to get anything non-life threatening treated for quite a while. When I came out the high street was utterly deserted, apart from a few homeless people who clearly had nowhere else to go. It was a horrible cold windy day, and the whole experience, including the empty tube ride home, felt so dystopian.

During the panic-buying empty-shelves phase, DH and DS coming back having managed to 'score' some loo roll and a few eggs from one of our local shops. They were so pleased with themselves, but it felt like something from a dystopian novel.

Driving to work (hospital) on the dual carriageway and no other car on the road - spooky ... eerily quiet in outpatients knowing it was mayhem on the wards

Me and a friend sitting in our cars next to each other at costa for a date and seeing other people do the same. Hearing people were quarantining their shopping

2nd week into the original lockdown visiting my dad on the covid intensive care ward before they turned off the machines......

2 nurses dressed me in what I can only describe as the kind of get up you see in movies during a nuclear apocalypse - it was very very surreal!!

Also, calling at my PIL on our daily walk and talking to them on the doorstep. I hadn't thought about it until I read this thread but we've never reverted back to going inside and STILL stand on the doorstep..... which seems ridiculous??!!!

Long daily phone conversations on a loop with my mum who has Alzheimer’s and is in a care establishment - talking about her childhood, the early life things she could still remember, over and over again. Then suddenly one day she said, ‘Why have you all abandoned me?’

@WithRosesAroundTheDoor

I feel like this thread should be saved for posterity.

Yes. And some posters on mn should be very ashamed

Not being able to visit my mother-in-law in her last days is such a painful memory.

With regards to stupidity... seeing a woman grabbing as many beef joints as possible, at our local Tesco, was so very surreal. Her husband barricaded her with their trolley while she grabbed as many joints as she could.
People around her were so aghast yet not one of us saw fit to challenge her. I think we were just utterly gobsmacked.

Sneaking out under cover of darkness on a perfectly cold, starlit night, to take some wine bottles to our local recycling bin. Saturday evening in the town centre, streets were completely and utterly deserted. I remember the enormous adrenaline rush, heart pounding, feeling like I was the only person alive in the world. I was sweating by the time I got back to the house just through sheer nervousness. Profoundly bizarre moment.

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

Having my baby almost entirely alone as I was left to it with her then being in nicu and I was not allowed to leave my hospital room for 14 days. No visitors at all. Then coming home and nobody meeting them. No baby classes, no chatting to other mums. No baby clothes shopping and nobody to get excited with when she did things for the first time. But I was one of the lucky. If I wasn’t pregnant I would have been doing my normal job on critical care. My colleagues are amazing. But seeing how they have been changed by the experience is heartbreaking.

28 ventilated patients instead of 8 on my ward. 1 nurse to 3 patients. 3 or 4 patients dying in a day routinely.

Comforting dd1 after she had found out her school prom had been cancelled, following the third reorganisation of her school timetable, the reorganisation of her exams for the second year running, the cancellation of all her final year school expeditions and field trips, her dance concert, her spring half term trip abroad, and her school graduation ceremony. She wasn't initially that bothered about the prom but it became increasingly important to her and her friends as every other event was cancelled throughout the year, and although they had been very resilient up to that point and had withstood the various disappointments well, in the end it proved to be one cancellation too many.

Providing end of life care to multiple people and the one time.
Absolutely tore the building apart😢Never felt so helpless in all my life. The look of terror on the staffs face as they turned up for another shift unsure if they would get it and take it home.
I'm not sure I could do that again.

Dr Hilary saying you shouldn’t wash your car 🤷🏻‍♀️

And people in here saying you shouldn’t buy Easter eggs as not essential.

And the shopping bleaching

Going into our local supermarket- think this was towards the end of the first lockdown- and they had taped off the clothes/home decor aisles as they weren’t deemed essential and therefore people shouldn’t be shopping in them 🤨

We live very rurally. I was furloughed from school and neither DD nor I left our house and woods for 8 weeks.

DP was doing the shopping as he was NHS and out at work so it was cutting down on essential journeys. He said I needed to see our nearest town empty. It is normally incredibly busy with tourists. We went to get food. I was terrified we'd be arrested. An ambulance passed and put on its sirens. I was convinced it was the police!

When Gavin Williamson said about children who hadn't played with another child for 10 weeks and I looked at our DD. That made me cry.

What I found worst was the day in June 2020 when I had to do emergency child care for my gs as he was unwell and my dd as a teacher needed to be in work. When they arrived early in the morning he was upset as he thought he would have to stay outside all day as he thought he wouldn’t be allowed in the house as knew he wasn’t normally. He was only 3 years old.

My happy memory was the day I went to have my first vaccine in February 2021 was an absolutely beautiful day and I was so excited to be able to drive more than 5 minutes from home as we were in lockdown and couldn’t go out. I was early for my appointment as there was no traffic on the roads

DP being so upset as he was having people die in A&E including a baby. They normally die elsewhere in the hospital.

It is so strange looking back isn't it, hard to believe it has happened. I remember on the day schools closed I went to collect my dd who is in reception. She was beaming, handing me a picture she had drawn. It made me feel so sad not knowing when she would return to school again. Spending my Sunday mornings queuing to get in the supermarket, being screamed at by another customer in M&S food hall, all because I was literally a centimetre from the sticker on the floor where I was supposed to stand when queuing up. All the rules like not being able to have an alcoholic drink without a meal seem crazy now. It think my lowest point was finding out on the same day 2 lovely ladies I had worked with had died of Covid. DH was at work, I put dc in front of the tv with a pizza and just sobbed.

Oh and during the first lockdown panicking that the Easter eggs in my trolley for dc were not essential and I shouldn't be buying them