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.

Being an NHS "hero" for 5 minutes and now back to having chairs thrown at me and being screamed at because we have no staff and people can't get want they want NOW. Lol I knew this would happen.

Ringing round local distilleries to see whether they were manufacturing hand gel

My lovely cat sadly died 2 weeks after the start of lockdown. My then boyfriend offered to come over on the Sunday to bury the body in my garden. At about 10 am on that Sunday I got a text from him saying he'd been stopped by the police who had told him he wasn't allowed to do that and had escorted his car home! They'd also said if they had time, they'd come to my house and do it. I really didn't want to have the police in my garden, the embarassment! Fortunately they didn't come. Phew.

Lockdown broke my relationships tbh and the fact that the Government had effectively criminalized sex didn't help!

The picture in the news of the clothes in supermarkets in Dublin being deemed "non-essential" hidden by a wall of essential Easter eggs...

I have worked all through the pandemic, luckily we had plenty of PPE.
I was working with a woman with a learning disability, she really couldn’t get her head around the masks. We went for a walk, she refused to wear a mask and the police stopped us. I explained the situation and they were understanding, although it didn’t stop her next door neighbour reporting us.
I was terrified when our DD caught covid the first time, she had started university and was living in halls. She was an asymptomatic carrier.
Her next two infections were much less dramatic.

*relationship, I only had the one!

An empty Victoria Train Station.

An empty Oxford Street.

The children's play equipment in my local park taped off.

My heart goes out to those of you who lost loved ones.

Staying overnight in a hotel to attend my dad's funeral last Feb and having to show a utility bill in joint names to reception to prove that my husband & I lived together (we have the same surname!). Just ridiculous.

Reading about a group of submariners having the police called to them by a busybody when they were having a party.
On top of their submarine, which was in dock, away from the public.
They had been at sea together for months cramped in a submarine and hadn't even been ashore,but hey, covid!!
Mind boggling.

Watching celebrities sob and then sing imagine because they were stuck in their house.

Their houses with private pools, tennis courts, home cinemas etc

Walking around Sainsbury’s when the panic buying started and literally every food shelf was empty.

Seeing an ambulance crew in full head to toe PPE suits during the first lockdown.

Queueing outside the supermarket and people not wearing masks but still wiping the trolley handles thinking it would protect them against an airborne virus.

Oh god yes, clothes were non essential too, weren't they? Naked one hour a day outdoor exercise then?

Going into town (I was still working, but out of town) to see what it looked like with no people and deciding it looked awful. Town centres are built for people.

Too many farcical nonsensical moments to mention. Overriding that I continue to be angry at the ludicrous situation that was forced upon us for far too long, the damage to kids education and mental health... And safety! So much of it was utter nonsense. I'm afraid I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought were intelligent but turned out not to be the case with their parroting about rules and irritating virtue signalling. The reality is a lot of people liked being babied and controlled by the state and a lot of people are lazy.

When Boris Johnson didn't know he was at a party

@Pugsbladder

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

I have a lovely neighbour, genuinely a very nice person but she (up to recently) was still leaping onto the road if we were about to meet on the path. I don't think she used to even check if there was traffic before doing it. Fortunately it's a quiet estate.

Simply queuing around the car park at our local Sainsburys right at the beginning of it and a few people wearing masks and gloves. Thinking to myself where do I buy a mask from, and just chatting to people 2 metres away commenting on how surreal it was.

@Norgie

Reading about a group of submariners having the police called to them by a busybody when they were having a party. On top of their submarine, which was in dock, away from the public. They had been at sea together for months cramped in a submarine and hadn't even been ashore,but hey, covid!! Mind boggling.

DH (army officer) had to supervise dinner in the cookhouse at one point as apparently people were sitting too close together or trying to sit in too large groups...

They could share bathrooms, bedrooms and vehicles but not sit next to each other at dinner...

I am a key worker (office based) and on one particularly bad day, stressed and not knowing what was going to hit us next, myself and two of my team just danced. It sounds frivolous when I type that but at that point in time it was either cry and give up or dance.
We chose dance (blinded by the light by the Weekend) and when it was done, we sat down and worked on as normal. Whenever I hear that track now, I am taken back to that day.

Visiting my mum at her care home after her stroke. My sister and I had to sit outside, wearing masks, and mum was wheeled into the room. SIs and I used 'naughtily' pull down our masks for a a minute so mum could see us.

And my brother, as our mum lay dying, being told off for touching her arm when he drove in the middle of the night for a 30 minute visit to say goodbye.

On a happier note- going for our daily walk with both of my sons. And playing badminton in the back garden together (even though I learned that I was spectacularly bad at it )

Soubriquet

Watching celebrities sob and then sing imagine because they were stuck in their house.

Their houses with private pools, tennis courts, home cinemas etc

Lol now now. We would never have got through pandemic were it not for Elton John, wig aloft, inspiring us all with "am dill danding".

A woman shopper had a massive go at me for going the wrong way down a shop isle

Got told off by shop assistant for standing in the wrong 'spot' while waiting to pay at a self serve till

I got a lot of telling off basically

The one way system (marked by big stickers on floor) in the local pharmacy which ended in a corner and I then had to turn round and come back the way I'd just come🤷🏼‍♀️
Presumably head office had told them they had to have a one way system without looking at size of the shop

Real life wasn't too bad, queuing up to get into the supermarket in the cold and rain was the most memorable it got.

On here was ridiculous. Posters went from thinking it was nothing to worry about to full hysteria. Telling people to go without the basics or you were a murderer.

I have to admit, seeing a local arena converted to a vaccination centre, scared the fuck out of me when I first went in, it was like something from a dystopian movie.

On a personal level, my daughter was three months old when the pandemic hit - she is now two and said the word 'mask' before she said her brothers names.

I'll also never forget the first time I went to 'the big Tesco' after lockdown, standing in a huge queue outside with everyone in masks, it felt terrifying and like something out of a horror movie.