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.

tape on benches for me

arguments about whether driving 3 miles to walk your dog was "outside the local area"

police stopping visitors at beauty spots, the national trust being told to shut carparks so people wouldn't take walks at their locations

One of the big local playgrounds was still locked up in June-July 2020

People being told they couldn't go surfing or kayaking (or drive anywhere to take exercise)

It was illegal to meet up with another person to go for a walk outdoors

Police knocking on your door to give warnings to anyone who did this

Also, people holding illicit giant weddings & other gatherings

Nurse in Lake District, working locum, staying in a holiday cottage, got her tyres slashed

Empty supermarket shelves for days on end

People afraid to greet someone else's dog in case it carried covid germs

Someone shouted "Only one hour!" when we were out for a cycle ride

Crying in absolute despair when they announced schools were closing. I had a 2yo and a 6yo and a neighbour who hated us and banged on the wall the second my kids made any noise. The thought of being locked in the house with them, with nowhere to go, working and trying to home school the eldest and keep the youngest safe was incomprehensible to me and I nearly had a breakdown.

Having a socially distanced, masked up funeral for my mother in law, I didn’t even hug my father in law that day. I’m just glad we ignored the rules before hand and kept visiting before she died. But every visit I worried we’d be reported.

Just thinking about what everybody has gone through and what we missed out on and lost makes me cry.

In a park with my grandson, they were back open. Someone's toddler fell flat on his face in front of me. The second he hit the floor, all I could hear across the park was the mother screaming,'Don't touch him, step back' over and over as she ran across.

It really upset me; it made me feel like I was dirty and disgusting.

I was pregnant and going into the hospital for scans a lot as I had issues. The midwives would tell me that as soon as I got home, I had to strip off at the door, put my clothes in the wash,
quarantine my shoes/notes/phone case in a plastic bag for three days and immediately shower. Fucking batshit and no I didn’t. How the hell was I going to catch covid from my jeans or my hair after sitting in an empty waiting room that was constantly sprayed down. My friend called me dangerous for not doing it and said she was reporting me to the hospital 😆 - I felt it was dangerous to induce that amount of paranoia.

My neighbour doing a Hyacinth Bucket style leap into her privet hedge as I walked past her one day. Then screaming that she would now be at risk because I’d got too close (it was a very wide pavement).

Seeing my local tesco superstore in the news, the carpark rammed with people queuing to get in, when they did the shelves were obviously empty because everyone was panic buying before
they could restock - this lead to people on the local facebook group saying we would all starve to death and some absolutely panicking. It was like watching a horror show the way some people were acting.

How much some people seemed to love it all, and loved grassing up friends and family was saddening.

hearing tales of police fining people
seeing a police car while i was walking at the beach, for some reason i hadnt even bought my dog in case i got into trouble - seems mad now

never ever stopped by the police despite driving to work every day - no wonder people protest now, now they can

oh yeah ,this is good
Plenty other pictures like it, customers in HomeBase etc.

Being leapt at by staff when you entered a shop, them insisting you must sanitise or not pick up anything you wouldn't immediately buy

Having to buy something, walk to mall toilets, try it on, decide it didn't fit, bring it back for refund, buy next size down, repeat...

People who usually espouse personal liberty values enthusiastically embracing authoritarian measures

"granny killers"

The entire row about masking (all sides)

arguments on MN why UK is not New Zealand

the whole Zero Covid movement

In June 2020, taking my then 12 year old to an appointment slot at her primary school to say goodbye to her teacher. They had set up a desk outside on the pavement and she was allowed to approach to pick it up off the desk whilst the teacher stood back 2 metres. She was too anxious to do it, and asked me to fetch it instead.
She's never recovered 😭

seeing children at the beach and the mum hovering nearby in case they children went too near to each other

During the first lockdown when school was only open for children of essential workers and the numbers attending were very low, having to make sure the children were distancing from each other in the classroom, all facing the same direction and not allowed to get up and move around unless it was for a toilet visit. At lunchtime in the dinner hall they were allowed to sit with siblings in their household bubble if they had them, if not they had to sit alone. It was so sad for those poor kids.

Also the way people went totally OTT about takeaway deliveries.

That pizza box was definitely going to kill you if you touched it even for a millisecond.

Universities saying that in case of fire, covid+ resident students would have to wait for everyone else to evacuate residences first before they could escape the building.

How quiet all the roads were, and how you saw how families going for walks. Previously, you rarely saw dads with their kids during Monday-friday (ie. working week) but suddenly, whole familes were out, exploring the local area, on bikes etc.

People diving in front of moving cars rather than walk past another human being on a pavement.

We worked all through it so didn't feel too different just scary.
Dd 18 had to make the difficult choice between staying here or at her boyfriends family. She chose there (good choice or she would have been here alone everyday) we had loads of zoom meetings but we missed her loads.
Saturday night discos, just me dh dd2 and a few drinks.
We posted them on Facebook and people said they looked forward to it 🤣

My dh dying and my children unable to visit him in hospital, because they had to self isolate due to thier covid bubble bursting in school.

Losing my job, made redundant

Got another job, working as a cleaner on the wards and seeing how upset the patients were at thier relatives not being able to visit. An elderly lady on a ground floor ward managed to open the window a few inches and was crying and holding hands with her son and daughter and grandchildren through the window. The nurses turned a blind eye, just pure compassion. The hospital showed the same compassion to me 6 months later and I’ll always be greatful

I went to pick up dd from primary school and I saw the TAs wiping down all the play equipment with disinfectant wipes. That really got to me for some reason.

Still being stared at when wearing a mask with my hijab on, when everyone around me also had a mask on, many of them also wearing dark coloured ones. Very strange. The standard blue ones are too big for me so would've been useless.

Sitting in my mum's garden with a flask of coffee and my own mug and shouting conversations through the glass (French doors) while mum and dad had a cuppa inside. They wouldn't even open the window.

I would leave food in the garden for them and they would collect it after I left.

Not lockdown itself but the worry about how I could keep my department going vi's a vi's BAU with 22 staff working from home and managing remotely. So much so that early in the first week when I woke up 9ne morning I hallucinate that an army of beetles was marching across my bedroom ceiling.

After that I just got on with it.

We will only see the real horror from now as the country descends into a deep recession partly because the public brayed for lockdown to continue and the government has pissed millions up the walls and borders on Furlough. I frankly don't want to hear one whinge about inflation, job loss from.one poster who reared in fear about a disease that killed a tiny orientate of those who caught it and the fact that half the population hasn't caught it.

@ghost mouse 😕 how terrible for you…sending you love xx

Little Gds, still only 3 during first lockdown, during a distanced meeting in their front garden, saying he knew we couldn’t have a cuddle because of ‘conavirus’.
Ditto same Gds at same age, all too aware that he couldn’t pick up someone else’s football in the park and throw it back, because of ‘conavirus’.

He always seemed quite happy regardless, though - thank goodness!

The first announcement from boris where he put us on furlough and we were in lockdown for 3 weeks. That 3 weeks was the strangest time of my life! Showing my parents my baby through glass, only being allowed out for an hour. I have fond memories of it now but at the time it felt so bizarre!

Police checking people's shopping to see if they were buying non-residential items.

Much discussion about what a non-essential item is. (According to Mumsnet, milk is non-essential because you can put a lump of cheese in your coffee instead.)

Police arresting a woman for making a non-essential train journey.

That picture of a couple out walking their dog in a field in the middle of nowhere, with a massive arrow drawn on it pointing at the dog and labelling it 'non-essential'.

When the daily death toll hit 2000.

Being expected to clap for a health system that discharged covid infected patients to nursing homes and changed its treatment/admission policy so that people with breathing difficulties were left at home to die.

'Stay the fuck at home'.

One of the TV doctors... Hilary....proclaiming that we should not be washing our cars....

Just so many things when it came to work. The first and I guess bigest for me was spending the first 3 weeks working from home, then going in to work on a ward that three weeks previously has been our offices! It blew my mind that they'd been able to turn all the building works round so quickly and really did make me realise the severity of it all.