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Original poster

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

758 replies

Jaggerdagger · 11/03/2022 07:09

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.

OP posts:
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5
22EL23 · 11/03/2022 08:41

I remember lots of people wiping down shopping, obsessively using hand sanitiser and only going out once a day for a maximum of an hour.

I just carried on a normal. I was PCR tested twice a week as a requirement for work and I never caught COVID and no one I know at work did (200 of us) until February this year where about 50% of them came down with it due to a party.

It upsets me greatly as I wore masks and washed my hands but some people were absolutely terrified as the media loved causing a frenzy. There will be a lot of mental health issues as a result.

Juno22 · 11/03/2022 08:41

Having someone from the Home Office knock on my door to check I was in while quarantining after a holiday last summer. I felt like a criminal. Surreal.

FantasticFebruary · 11/03/2022 08:41

Seeing the people in China being picked up by men in white jumpsuits & the men nailin/screwing wood across the doors of houses & apartments -freaked the fuck out of me.

Having the nightingales built (phew) then not having staff for them (fucking hell)

The mass graves they dug.

starfishmummy · 11/03/2022 08:41

Washing the shopping!!!

And DH who had always refused to work from home, working from home.

BookkeeperBobby · 11/03/2022 08:41

This is the photo I was thinking of. There were others: police had drones so that they could take pictures of people on their non essential walks.

Stringervest · 11/03/2022 08:44

When a town in Spain bleached the beach to clean off the covid and killed all the wildlife.

Sunsetmom · 11/03/2022 08:44

The queues EVERYWHERE! B&Q became a day out 🤣

I actually loved the zoom bingo, parties etc with friends! Saw them more then than I do normally!

Sadly the effect it had on some family members mental health continues to this day, it makes me so sad!

blackfriars · 11/03/2022 08:45

Walking into hospital to be induced to have DS by myself as DH wasn’t allowed to be with me. He was allowed in for the last 20 mins - ie once I was pushing!

Original poster
Jaggerdagger · 11/03/2022 08:46

@3luckystars

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.

This gave me such a lump in my throat 😢
OP posts:
ancientgran · 11/03/2022 08:48

@ParadiseLaundry

Seeing the police parked outside of the local park checking to see who was going in and checking if they lived in a house together. It just seemed utterly and disproportionately ridiculous at the time and now but most people seemed supportive of it. DS asked why the police were there and what they were doing and it occurred to me that we always tell children that the police are the good guys, who catch bad guys and take them away but here they were stopping families from meeting other families to walk and talk and play together and that they were the bad guys. Sad
That's really unfair. The police weren't the bad guys, they were doing what they were told in a very strange and surreal situation.

I hope you haven't told your kids that.

Buzzinwithbez · 11/03/2022 08:48

Being told off for not re-sanitising my hands after going to the loo to wash the migraine inducing sanitiser off, then being followed to my table by sanitiser women announcing she was here to keep everyone safe - including me.

Scianel · 11/03/2022 08:48

@Stringervest that stood out as a particular low for me.

LethargeMarg · 11/03/2022 08:49

I think it's quite easy with hindsight now to see how daft a lot of the measures were but at the time we really didn't know how bad it could have got. Eg now we know it probably wouldn't be an issue had everyone been out on the peak district walking dogs etc but we didn't know whether it could be transmitted outside and it was at the time when healthy bus drivers were dying from catching it , no vaccines etc ...

Original poster
Jaggerdagger · 11/03/2022 08:50

@WindyPopPops

The absolute silence broken only by the occasional sound of sirens The camaraderie within our town An elderly lady joining the long snake of a queue at the supermarket(about 30 people or more) . Each and every person in that queue told her to go infront of them. I cried Then the person behind me said 'that would only happen at Waitrose' Grin
This is wonderful.
OP posts:
stuntbubbles · 11/03/2022 08:50

Saying goodbye to my dad the weekend before lockdown, 10m apart on an empty train platform with a Cold War announcement-style tannoy blaring “CORONAVIRUS”

ancientgran · 11/03/2022 08:50

I'm my DHs carer, took him for his first jab in Feb last year. Nurse asked how old I was, if I was his carer and added me on. Oh the excitement of getting the jab when I wasn't expecting it.

LethargeMarg · 11/03/2022 08:51

Although it does make me again furious to think while we were too scared to go for a walk with friends and at work we couldn't even meet outsyde in small groups Boris and co were having drinks parties.

Imicola · 11/03/2022 08:52

Probably when all the lockdown rule breaking number 10 party stories came out, and i reflected on what i had done that bent the rules, and realised the only thing was driving 6 miles for a countryside walk (i live in a city) when the rules said i could only travel 5 miles. Looking back it all feels surreal.

Wellington17 · 11/03/2022 08:52

Does anyone remember when there was talk of a Tiger at a zoo in Canada (?) catching COVID and everyone was terrified that animals would get it too?!?!?!?!?!

LethargeMarg · 11/03/2022 08:54

Yep should you let your cat out in case they caught covid and spread it!!

violetbunny · 11/03/2022 08:54

I'm in New Zealand, we were blissfully COVID free for a while at the beginning, then BAM! Suddenly it was announced we would go into an extremely strict lockdown with less than 48 hours' notice.

I work for what was deemed an essential business, so I had to drive into the office and collect my things to work from home. The usually packed motorway was absolutely deserted, it was so so eerie. The motorway signage which normally shows traffic updates instead said one simple message: "STAY SAFE. BE KIND."

Something about that message triggered something very emotive in me, it was such a surreal moment that I burst into tears. It felt like the end of the world as I knew it.

SpiderinaWingMirror · 11/03/2022 08:55

Going to motorway services on the M4 and being the only customer.
Having to pack up and post
groceries to my Mum in her Somerset village having exhausted every other option!
Bumping into friends when out on a walk and being worried someone would report us for talking to each other.

TheSunWillComeOut2moro · 11/03/2022 08:56

Probably that first time we went into lockdown and Boris addressed the nation for the first time. It was like he was announcing we were going to war. I'd been so confident this time 2 years ago that schools wouldn't close, it felt like something out of a film.

I spent most of the first year of the pandemic pregnant (I got pregnant the week we went into lockdown, miscarried end of May, then pregnant again straight away) there was so many things being pregnant in a pandemic, weird rules, not allowed my husband with me etc etc. Having a horrible birth and being stuck in hospital but my husband only allowed to pop in 1 hour a day and then being asked to leave. I just got on with it at the time but looking back it was awful.

Buzzinwithbez · 11/03/2022 08:57

@LethargeMarg

I think it's quite easy with hindsight now to see how daft a lot of the measures were but at the time we really didn't know how bad it could have got. Eg now we know it probably wouldn't be an issue had everyone been out on the peak district walking dogs etc but we didn't know whether it could be transmitted outside and it was at the time when healthy bus drivers were dying from catching it , no vaccines etc ...
Even if we didn't know this, the govt knew this very early on and kept up this complete, damaging farce way too long. No wonder there were so many conspiracy theories. They were fed by so many nonsensical rules that it was hard to understand whether they were driven by incompetence or malice.
Athena51 · 11/03/2022 08:57

When we were allowed to meet another person outside I would drive to my son's house with a picnic. We would walk to the nearby park together (socially distanced of course!) and then sit at opposite ends of a long bench, eat our sandwiches and talk for a couple of hours, walk back - no hugging and I would drive home.
DP and I weren't living together at the start of the lockdown. I lived alone and I didn't hug anyone for months.